Perceptual weighting and phonemic awareness in pre-reading and early-reading children.
Abstract
While metalinguistic awareness and speech perception have been
found to each be related to numerous other linguistic processes,
e.g. reading acquisition, phonological development, phonological
disorders, it is only recently that the relationship between awareness
and perception has been considered. Recent studies have
demonstrated correlations between changes in perceptual weighting
of acoustic cues and the development of metalinguistic skills
at the phonemic level. This finding raises questions as to the exact
nature of the correlation between the two processes. Is the relationship
strictly linear, or could one of the two processes have a causal
influence on the development of the other? This paper discusses
the results of a longitudinal study of beginning–reading children,
and a cross–sectional study of older pre–reading children, both of
which aim to address the issue of causality in the relationship between
perceptual weighting and phonemic awareness.