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Variables influencing phonemic discrimination performance in normal and learning-disabled children
The Journal of Speech and Hearing Disorders
|November 1, 1979
Summary
Learning-disabled children’s phonemic discrimination abilities vary, with a small subgroup showing significant impairment. Stimulus features like phonetic difference and word familiarity impacted performance, but not vocabulary or reading skills.
Area of Science:
- Child Psychology
- Developmental Linguistics
- Educational Psychology
Background:
- Phonemic discrimination is crucial for reading acquisition.
- Learning disabilities can affect phonemic processing.
- Understanding factors influencing phonemic discrimination in children is vital for early intervention.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate phonemic discrimination abilities in first-grade children with and without learning disabilities.
- To examine the impact of phonetic difference, phoneme contrast position, and lexical familiarity on discrimination performance.
- To identify subgroups of learning-disabled children with specific phonemic processing deficits.
Main Methods:
- Administered a phonemic discrimination test to 25 learning-disabled and 25 normal first-grade children.
- Systematically manipulated word-pairs based on phonetic difference, contrast position, and lexical familiarity.
- Analyzed performance differences and correlations with vocabulary and reading achievement.
Main Results:
- A small subgroup of learning-disabled children exhibited significantly impaired phonemic discrimination.
- Phonetic difference, contrast position, and lexical familiarity all significantly affected discrimination performance.
- All tested stimulus variables showed significant interactions.
- Phonemic discrimination performance did not correlate with receptive vocabulary or reading achievement in either group.
Conclusions:
- Phonemic discrimination deficits in learning-disabled children are not uniform and may be concentrated in specific subgroups.
- Linguistic and phonetic features of stimuli play a significant role in phonemic discrimination.
- Phonemic discrimination skills, as tested, are distinct from receptive vocabulary and overall reading achievement in this age group.