Children's knowledge of auditory/articulatory correspondences: phonologic and metaphonologic

Forty-five normally developing children, 15 within each group of mean ages 5, 6, and 7, participated in a metaphonologic study examining the knowledge of auditory/articulatory correspondences. Tasks included (a) a nonverbal identification of correspondences by selecting the appropriate side of a split video screen display, and (b) a verbal explanation of the cues used to motivate this choice. With development, there were significant increases in numbers of correct responses on the nonverbal task and corresponding changes in relative proportions of verbal explanation types. No significant relationship between level of performance on metaphonologic tasks and phoneme production skill was found.