01 NRDC Dyslexia 1-88 update - Texthelp

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Research Report
structure is not present from the start of language learning, the beginning reader must learn
how to process the complex, generally continuous acoustic speech signal so that the phonetic
structure of language can be derived (Nittrouer, 2002). This process may last for a period of
several years (Nittrouer, 2002).
Phonological awareness is both the explicit knowledge that words are made up of sounds
and the ability to manipulate those sounds.
The ability to develop phonological awareness is innate but development is not spontaneous.
Phonological awareness develops over time and is helped by language games and nursery
rhymes.
Phonemic awareness is a fine-grained version of phonological awareness, with the insight
that each spoken word is made up of phonemes.
Because phonemes are ideas in the mind, not noises in the ear, a lack of phonemic
awareness need not imply a lack of phonemic sensitivity.
Most people do not develop phonemic awareness without being taught.
Individual differences in phonological awareness
Phonemic awareness is not a unitary process (Ackermann et al., 1997; Ivry & Lebby, 1998).
Neither is phonological awareness an all-or-nothing quality: the ability to isolate and combine
sounds in words is part of a continuum stretching from unexpectedly poor to unexpectedly
good readers (Bryant & Bradley, 1985). Lower levels of phonological sensitivity (Bowey, 1995)
and phonemic segmentation (Duncan & Seymour, 2000) have been associated with socioeconomic
disadvantage, to the extent that the difference between middle-class and socially
disadvantaged children’s ability to read single words may be reduced or even eliminated after
controlling for differences in phonological awareness (Raz & Bryant, 1990). Moreover, children
from socially-disadvantaged homes respond to training in phonological awareness (Blachman
et al., 1994).
Low levels of phonological awareness in people from socially disadvantaged backgrounds are
more likely to reflect early language experience than to indicate innate learning difficulties,
because general language backgrounds shape the way that people learn to weigh the acoustic
properties of speech in their decisions about phonemes (Nittrouer, 2002). This will be the
case, whether linguistic disadvantage is experienced at home (Hecht et al., 2000) or at school
(Raz & Bryant, 1990). Nevertheless, any correlation between a measure of socio-economic
disadvantage and a measure of phonological awareness could have multiple explanations,
relating to both environmental and biological factors.
Socio-economic disadvantage predicts linguistic disadvantage.
Linguistic disadvantage impedes the development of phonological awareness.