How Good Is the Phoneme Elision Test in Assessing Reading, Spelling and Arithmetic-Related Abilities?

The aim of this study was to investigate the psychometric properties and diagnostic accuracy of phoneme elision task (PET).

We assessed cross-sectionally 470 Brazilian children (54.3% girls) aged between 7 and 11 years (mean age = 8.83, sd = 0.85), from the 2nd to 4th grades. Children were assessed in their phonemic awareness ability, as well as intelligence, general school achievement, both verbal and visuospatial working memory, single-word reading, and nonsymbolic magnitude comparison. Beyond the psychometric properties and diagnostic accuracy of PET, we also provided reference values.

Our data suggest that PET is composed mainly of one single construct, with high item reliability and precision (KR-20 above 0.90). In general, items have acceptable discriminability, considering item-total correlations. Overall PET is generally a good screening tool for reading and spelling difficulties (SD), as well as to identify children with learning difficulties in the early grades. However, it is not a reliable measure for screening math learning difficulties. Finally, PET shows good convergent and divergent validity.

We provide evidence about the psychometric properties and diagnostic accuracy of a PET. Results contribute to the assessment of phonemic awareness in Brazilian children, in both clinical and research contexts. The PET can be used as a screening tool for reading and SD, which could lead to early interventions.