Segmental analysis of speech and its relation to reading ability

The relationships between the acquisition of segmental awareness, i.e. the awareness of phonemic and phonetic units, and the acquisition of alphabetic literacy are examined: segmental awareness is elicited by learning to read and write in the alphabetic system and is crucial to success in this learning. It is also argued that the development of the ability of explicit analysis of speech into segments requires ageneral analytic capacity.Cognitive explanations of dyslexia must take into account the fact that the ability of segemental analysis of most dyslexics is very poor. Given that dyslexics do not lack experience with alphabetic material nor, as suggested by their performance on nonspeech tasks, analytic capacity, one likely factor of this inability may be related to the conscious representation of speech on which the analytic capacity operates. The normal format of this representation probably corresponds to a sequence of articulatory acts or syllables. In most dyslexics, the format of this representation might not be adequate for the isolation of segments.