PHONOLOGICAL AWARENESS SKILLS OF SIX-YEAR-OLD CHILDREN 
WITH MILD AND MODERATE ARTICULATION DISORDERS 
 
 
Except where reference is made to the work of others, the work described in this thesis is 
my own or was done in collaboration with my advisory committee.  This thesis does not 
include proprietary or classified information. 
 
 
 
 
_____________________________________ 
Keri Leigh Gernand 
 
 
 
 
 
Certificate of Approval: 
 
 
 
 
______________________________  _____________________________ 
William O. Haynes     Michael J. Moran, Chair 
Professor      Professor 
Communication Disorders    Communication Disorders 
 
 
 
_____________________________   _____________________________ 
Nancy J. Haak      Stephen L. McFarland 
Associate Professor     Dean 
Communication Disorders    Graduate School 
 
 
 
 
 
PHONOLOGICAL AWARENESS SKILLS OF SIX-YEAR-OLD CHILDREN  
WITH MILD AND MODERATE ARTICULATION DISORDERS 
 
Keri Leigh Gernand 
 
 
 
 
A Thesis Submitted to 
 
 
the Graduate Faculty of  
 
 
Auburn University 
 
 
in Partial Fulfillment of the  
 
 
Requirements for the Degree of 
 
 
Master of Science 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Auburn, Alabama 
May 11, 2006
 
iii 
 
PHONOLOGICAL AWARENESS SKILLS OF SIX-YEAR-OLD CHILDREN  
WITH MILD AND MODERATE ARTICULATION DISORDERS 
 
Keri Leigh Gernand 
 
 
 
 
Permission is granted to Auburn University to make copies of this thesis at its discretion, 
upon request of individuals or institutions and at their expense.  The author reserves all  
publication rights.   
 
 
 
 
 
______________________________ 
       Signature of Author 
      
 
 
       ______________________________ 
       Date of Graduation 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
iv 
 
VITA 
 
 
 
 Keri Leigh (Estes) Gernand, daughter of Dr. Thomas Raymond Estes, Jr, and 
Deborah Kay (Deidiker) Kerschner, was born January 11, 1983, in Rochester, Minnesota.  
She graduated from North St. Paul High School in 2001.  She attended Harding 
University in Searcy, Arkansas and graduated summa cum laude from the Honors 
College with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Communication Disorders in May 2004.  She 
entered Graduate School, Auburn University, in August 2004.  She married Timothy 
Gernand, son of Chuck and Becky (Harvey) Gernand, on December 18, 2005. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
v 
 
THESIS ABSTRACT 
PHONOLOGICAL AWARENESS SKILLS OF SIX-YEAR-OLD CHILDREN  
WITH MILD AND MODERATE ARTICULATION DISORDERS 
 
 
 
 
Keri Leigh Gernand 
 
 
Master of Science, May 11, 2006 
(B.A. Harding University, 2004) 
 
 62 Typed Pages 
Directed by Michael J. Moran 
 
  
  
  
 An investigation of the phonological awareness skills of children with mild and 
moderate articulation disorders is presented in this thesis.  A sample of 24 first graders, 
12 of whom had normal articulation and the other 12 having ?mild? articulation disorders 
as determined by a standardized test, were assessed on measures of phonological 
awareness.  A statistically significant difference was found between the performance of 
these two groups. 
 
 
 
 
 
vi 
 
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 
 
The author would like to thank Dr. Michael Moran for his endless patience, help, 
and guidance with this project.  Great appreciation is also extended to Dr. William 
Haynes and Dr. Nancy Haak for their contribution as committee members. This project 
would not have been possible without the faculty, staff, parents, and students at Smith 
Station Primary School and Beulah Elementary in Lee County, Alabama as well as 
Heather Rutledge for her encouragement and help in collecting the data.  Special thanks 
to Timothy for his support, encouragement and faith.        
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
vii 
 
Style manual used:  APA Publication Manual (5th edition) 
Computer software used:  Microsoft Windows XP, Statistical Software 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
viii 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS 
LIST OF TABLES??????????????????????????.     ix 
I. INTRODUCTION???????????????????????.. 
   
1 
II. REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE?????????????????.   
 
3 
III. JUSTIFICATION???????????????????????? 
 
20 
IV. METHOD??????????????????????????? 
 
23 
V. RESULTS??????????????????????????? 
 
28 
VI. DISCUSSION?????????????????????????. 
 
32 
VII. REFERENCES????????????????????????? 
 
42 
VIII. APPENDICES?????????????????????????. 
 
48 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
ix 
 
LIST OF TABLES 
1. Means and Standard Deviations for TOPAS?????????????.. 
   
28 
2. Summary of ANOVA for Subtests of TOPAS..????????????.   
 
28 
3. Q Values for Neuman-Keuls on Subtests of TOPAS?????????? 
 
29 
4. Means and Standard Deviations for Non-Standardized Measures.????? 
 
30 
5. Summary of ANOVA for Subtests of Non-Standardized Measures..???? 
 
30 
6. Q Values for Neuman-Keuls on Subtests of Non-Standardized Measures...?. 
 
31 
7. A Comparison of Scores from Different Schools??????..????? 
 
36 
 
 
1 
 
I. INTRODUCTION 
 
The ability to attend to and manipulate the sounds in spoken language is 
commonly referred to as phonological awareness (Catts & Kamhi, 2005).  Possessing 
phonological awareness skills indicates that a person not only has the knowledge that 
words are composed of smaller segments such as syllables and phonemes (Catts, 1991b), 
but that the person also has the ability to rearrange those smaller units (Cunningham, 
1990).   
Various tasks have been determined to be indicators of phonological awareness.  
These tasks include: rhyming, counting the number of phonemes in words, matching 
sounds in words, isolating sounds in words, deleting phonemes or syllables from words, 
and blending phonemes to produce words (Yopp, 1988; Anthony & Lonigan, 2004).  
Research has established a relationship between phonological awareness skills and 
reading performance (Cunningham, 1990; Adams, 1990; Blachman, 1991; Catts, 1991b; 
Catts & Kahmi, 2005; Ehri et al., 2001; Kirby, Pfeiffer, & Parilla, 2003).  Other studies 
have established a relationship between phonological awareness skills and spelling 
performance (Apel, Masterson, & Hart, 2004; Ball & Blachman, 1991; Ehri, et al. 2001; 
Lombardino, Bedford, Fortier, Carter & Brandi, 1997; Tangel & Blachman, 1992).  
Comparatively, a much smaller number of studies have investigated the relationship 
between speech and language impairments and phonological awareness.  
 
2 
 
Catts (1991b) found that children with language disorders are more likely to have 
problems with phonological awareness tasks.  Webster and Plante (1992) found a 
relationship between phonological disorders and performance on tasks of phonological 
awareness.  Also, Rvachew, Ohberg, Grawburg, and Heyding (2003) found that 
phonologically delayed four-year-olds had significantly poorer phonological awareness 
skills than their phonologically normal peers.   
The purpose of the following review of the literature is to provide specific 
examples of research in phonological awareness.  The literature reviewed will primarily 
involve phonological awareness as it relates to articulation and phonological disorders, 
but also as it relates to language, reading, and spelling.  The review will establish areas 
that need further research relating to the area of speech and language as it relates to 
phonological awareness skills.   
The purpose of the present study is to examine a possible relationship between 
mild and moderate phonological disorders and performance of six-year-old children on 
standardized and non-standardized measures of phonological awareness skills.  
 
3 
 
II. REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE 
 
 
Phonological Awareness 
 
Phonological awareness refers to the explicit sound structure of a language (Catts, 
1991b).  More specifically, phonological awareness involves a person?s ability ?to attend 
to, reflect on, or manipulate the speech sounds in words.?  (Catts & Kahmi, 2005).  
Stackhouse (1997) defines phonological awareness as, ?the ability to reflect on and 
manipulate the structure of an utterance (e.g., into words, syllables, or sounds) as distinct 
from its meaning? (p. 157).  The latter two definitions identify two aspects of 
phonological awareness: first, an understanding that words are composed of smaller 
units, namely syllables and phonemes (Catts, 1991b), and second, the ability to rearrange 
those smaller units (Cunningham, 1990).  As will be discussed later in this section, 
phonological awareness is not only related to expressive speech skills but also to reading 
and spelling ability (Rvachew et al., 2003; Webster & Plante, 1992; Lewis & Freebairn, 
1992; Larrivee & Catts, 1999; Cowan & Moran, 1997; Bird & Bishop, 1992; Bird, 
Bishop, & Freeman., 1995; Adams, 1990; Blachman, 1991; Catts, 1991; Catts & Kahmi, 
2005; Ehri et al., 2001; Kirby, Pfeiffer, & Parilla, 2003; Apel, Masterson, & Hart, 2004; 
Ball & Blachman, 1991; Lombardino, et al., 1997; Tangel & Blachman, 1992). 
Numerous tasks have been used to measure phonological awareness skills.  These 
tasks include:  rhyming; blending; segmentation and counting; and categorization and 
discrimination.  
 
4 
 
Rhyming 
 Tasks measuring rhyming ability have been constructed in a variety of ways.  
Rhyme oddity, rhyme matching, and rhyme production are all ways in which the 
presence of the ability to rhyme can be detected.  In rhyme oddity tasks, children are 
required to choose from a group of words which one does not ?sound the same? or belong 
on the basis of rhyme (Anthony and Lonigan, 2004).  An example of rhyme oddity would 
be presenting the child with the words ?duck, truck, and cat? then asking them which one 
didn?t belong.  During a task referred to as rhyme matching, subjects are asked to choose 
from a group which rhymes with a word given by the examiner.  This task would present 
the child with the words ?duck, truck, and cat? then ask them which two rhymed.  In 
tasks of rhyme production or rhyme supply, children are asked to produce rhymes to a 
word given by the examiner.  The examiner would give the child a word such as ?bat? 
then ask them to give a word back which rhymed with ?bat.? 
Alliteration 
 The phonological skill of alliteration can be classified in many of the same ways 
as rhyming.  Alliteration itself means that two words begin with the same sound.  
Therefore tasks of alliteration supply can require a child to supply the investigator with a 
word that alliterates with a word given to the child.  Tasks of alliteration matching 
require the child to respond with ?yes? or ?no? when asked if a word begins with the 
same sound as another word.  There are also tasks of alliteration oddity.  These tasks are 
those that would require a child to inform the investigator of words that do not begin the 
same as other words in a group.   
 
 
5 
 
Blending 
 The phonological awareness skill of blending can be divided on the segments of 
speech the child is being asked to blend.  Tasks of phoneme blending involve the child 
being asked to listen to individual phonemes and then repeat back the blended word 
(Anthony & Lonigan, 2004).  In tasks of phoneme blending, the child would be presented 
with the sounds /b/ /o/ /t/ then asked to blend them into the target word, ?boat.?  Tasks of 
syllable blending are very similar but instead require the child to blend syllables into 
words.  In these tasks, the child would blend ?ba? and ?by? to make the word ?baby.?   
Segmentation and Counting 
 In tasks of segmentation, the child can be asked to segment sentences into words 
(Webster & Plante, 1992), words into syllables (Webster & Plante, 1992), words into 
phonemes (Catts, 1991b; Webster & Plante, 1992; Yopp, 1988), and isolate certain 
phonemes (Yopp, 1988).  An example of a segmentation task would be asking a child to 
segment the word ?caterpillar? into the syllables ?cat? ?a? ?pil? ?er.?  Counting tasks 
require the child to be able to tap the number of syllables or phonemes in words (Catts, 
1991b; Yopp 1988).  An example of a counting task using the same word as before would 
be asking a child to tap their pencil with each syllable in ?caterpillar? then asking them to 
verbalize how many syllables there were.        
Manipulation 
 Tasks that require the participants to manipulate phonemes include tasks of 
elision and substitution.  Tasks involving elision or deletion (Yopp, 1988; Anthony & 
Lonigan, 2004) require the child to delete a specified phoneme or syllable from a word 
and repeat what is remaining.  For example, ?say the word ?stop? without the ?s.? Tasks 
 
6 
 
which involve substitution are those which ask the child to replace a sound in the word 
with a new phoneme and repeat the new word (Cowan & Moran, 1997).  For example, 
?say the word ?dog? now say it with a ?f? instead of a ?d.? 
Categorization and Discrimination 
 Tasks of categorization and discrimination are other measures of phonological 
awareness.  Categorization requires the child to group the sounds on the basis of a 
common element (e.g.; rhyming, or same initial, medial, or final sound) (Cowan & 
Moran, 1997).  This task could ask a child, when presented with the list: dog, dust, dark, 
and food; to tell the examiner which words belonged together based on beginning with 
the same sound.  Categorization differs from discrimination in that tasks of 
discrimination require that the child determine if words possess a common sound.  For 
example, ?Do the words doctor and bed have sounds in common?? 
Development of Phonological Awareness Skills 
In 1988 Yopp looked at the performance of children on different tests of 
phonemic awareness and from the information gathered, he created a hierarchy of 
phonological awareness tasks. According to his study, the following phonological 
awareness tasks can be ranked from easiest to hardest: rhyme, auditory discrimination, 
phoneme blending, word-to-word matching, sound isolation, phoneme counting, 
phoneme segmentation, phoneme deletion.    
Maclean, Bradley and Bryant (1987) found that children as young as three 
possessed an ability to analyze the sounds of words.  These skills found at age three, were 
also found to be predictors of those same children?s beginning reading.  This longitudinal 
study, following the children through the development of their phonological skills 
 
7 
 
allowed the investigators to rule out IQ as the primary reason for their ability to learn to 
read.  They were able to see that as the children developed more phonological awareness 
skills, they were able to learn how to read better. 
 Goldsworthy (1998) and Justice and Schule (2004) reviewed the literature and 
described the phonological awareness skills of children at various age levels.  The 
following is a summary of their findings regarding the development of phonological 
awareness: 
At age two years: Some two-year-olds are able to detect rhyme inconsistently, but at 
levels greater than chance.  These children are able to complete rhyme oddity tasks by 
selecting the word that does not rhyme from a group of three (e.g., hat, cat, boy).   
At age three years:  When presented with two words, many three-year-olds are able to 
complete rhyme detection tasks by indicating if two words rhyme or not.  Some three-
year-olds are able to generate at least one word that rhymes with a target word.  Many 
children at this age can recite known rhymes such as Jack and Jill.  Many are able to 
complete alliteration oddity tasks by identifying a word in a group of words that begins 
with a different sound (e.g., mad, mop, cat).  It is generally accepted that alliteration lags 
behind sensitivity to rhyme. 
At age four years: Children begin to exhibit an awareness of syllabic distinction.  This is 
the awareness that words can be divided into parts.  For example, the word ?baby? can be 
divided into ?ba? and ?by.?  About half of four-year-olds are able to count the number of 
syllables in multi-syllabic words.   
At age five years:  Most five-year-olds are able to generate rhyme spontaneously during 
play or on demand in games.  They exhibit general proficiency in rhyme detection tasks.  
 
8 
 
Most 5-year-olds can count the number of syllables in multi-syllabic words.  Some 
children at this age can also count the number of phonemes in words.  However, in terms 
of recognizing phonemes, it is more likely at age five that children are able to separate 
the first sound of single syllable words (onset) from the rest of the word (rime) which 
appears to be treated as a single unit.  For example, children can separate the word ?top? 
into t (onset) and op (rime) but not into t-o-p. 
At age six years: Most children demonstrate the ability to identify phonemes as units 
comprising syllables.  Many six-year-olds are able to blend two and three sounds in order 
to make a word (e.g., c-a-t makes ?cat?).   
At age seven years:  Children begin to spell phonetically.  They can segment three to 
four phonemes in words.  Many seven-year-olds can complete phoneme deletion tasks, 
that is, they are able to delete sounds from words (e.g., ?moose? without the /s/ is 
?moo?). 
A study investigating the development of phonological skills by Carroll, 
Snowling, Hume, and Stevenson, (2003) described the development of phonological 
awareness skills as ?a progression from awareness of large units (syllables and rimes) to 
awareness of small units (phonemes).?  This was contradictory to the generally accepted 
tenet that rime awareness precedes syllable awareness.  The investigators found no 
significant difference in the development of these two skills which led them to the 
conclusion that development occurred in a large-unit to small-unit progression.    
Anthony and Lonigan (2004) state that while researchers may disagree on 
whether or not phonological awareness skills fall within one construct, or are distinct 
abilities, a general statement can be made regarding these skills, ??there are multiple 
 
9 
 
phonological skills that are distinguished by linguistic complexity and type of operation 
performed.?  Results of their study found this to be true, that sensitivity to rhyme and 
sensitivity to other linguistic units are not separate entities.  Rather, they found that 
phonological sensitivity can be measured by different tasks (e.g., detection, blending, and 
deletion) and those tasks can vary in their linguistic complexity through different aspects 
of the speech unit (e.g., rimes, onsets, phonemes, syllables). 
Phonological Awareness relating to Speech and Language Impairments 
Regarding speech and language, there have been numerous studies showing that 
phonological disorders have an effect on reading and phonological awareness skills.  Bird 
and Bishop (1992) in their study linking phonological disorders and awareness of 
phonemes hypothesized that children with phonological disorders do not progress to the 
analysis of speech at the level of the phoneme.  This idea was manifested through the 
children?s inability to match phonemes in different word contexts.   
Bird, Bishop, & Freeman?s 1995 study was a replica of the one completed by Bird 
and Bishop in 1992.  These studies investigated the relationship between expressive 
phonological delay, phonological awareness and literacy.  The subjects were given three 
tests of phonological awareness, including one task of rime matching and two of onset 
matching at 70, 79, and 91 months of age.  During the assessment at 79 and 90 months, 
literacy skills were also assessed.  Results show that children with expressive 
phonological delay scored lower than their same age peers on both tasks of phonological 
awareness and literacy.  These results were found to be independent of whether or not 
there was a coexisting language disorder. 
 
10 
 
Similarly, Webster and Plante (1992) found that children with phonological 
disorders were not performing as their peers in the area of phonological awareness.  This 
study tested children on tasks of segmentation (sentence to word level, words to syllables, 
and words to phonemes) and a word recognition task (that did not require verbal 
responses from the children so as to accommodate the phonologically impaired children).  
The phonologically impaired children performed lower than their phonologically normal 
peers on all the tasks presented to them.  The investigators hypothesized that the 
children?s? phonological disorders might prevent the type of efficient phonological 
coding in their working memory that is necessary for phonological awareness.   
A study by Cowan and Moran (1997) studied children with articulation 
impairments on three tasks of phonological awareness:  rhyming, phoneme blending, and 
phoneme counting.  The children involved in the study ranged from kindergarten through 
third grade and those with articulation impairments were matched with same age peers 
who did not have any articulation impairment.  The children with articulation impairment 
were found to perform poorly in comparison with their age-matched peers on all three 
tasks of phonological awareness.  This study, while showing a link between children with 
articulation impairments and tasks of phonological awareness, did not take into account 
the severity of the articulation impairment in its results.   
Larivee and Catts (1999) investigated the relationship between phonological 
disorders and early reading ability.  Results indicated that the severity of the phonological 
disorder was predictive of future reading ability.  From the results, it was concluded that 
there was a link between proficiency in phonological awareness skills and phonological 
disorders.  This study did not, however, directly investigate a relation between 
 
11 
 
phonological awareness skills and phonological disorders, but rather word recognition 
and word attack skills.  In addition, in selecting the participants, the investigators did not 
disqualify those who had semantic-syntactic language disorders.  The participants? 
language delays could have influenced the data.   
  Rvachew et al. (2003) investigated the relationship between phonological 
awareness skills and phonological disorders and took severity of the articulation 
impairment into account.  This study investigated the phonological awareness skills of 
four year olds with and without moderate to severe expressive phonological delay.  The 
subjects were tested on phonological awareness tasks of rime match, onset match, and 
onset segmentation.  They were also tested on phonemic perception, letter names, literacy 
knowledge, and word knowledge.   Results showed that children with expressive 
phonological delay scored significantly lower on all tests (rime match, onset match, and 
onset segmentation) of phonological awareness than their same age peers without 
expressive phonological delay.  The method used to test the phonological awareness 
skills was not standardized, but rather, an adaptation of the method used by Bird and 
associates (1995).  While the experimental and control groups were matched for 
vocabulary development, they were not matched for expressive language delays therefore 
not ruling out language delay as a possible cause of the difference in phonological 
awareness skills.  The children were also not drawn from a homogenous pool.  The 
phonologically disordered group was taken from speech clinics in large children?s 
hospitals, whereas the phonologically normal group was taken from various preschool 
programs.  This does not rule out literature and phonological awareness exposure in 
preschool as a possible reason for the difference in the two groups.    
 
12 
 
While there have been consistent results in the area of studying phonological 
awareness and language impairments, the area of articulation or phonological 
impairments has not always yielded consistent results (Vellutino and Shub, 1982; Catts, 
1993; Bishop and Adams, 1990).  It has been well documented that children with 
language impairments are at much greater risk of encountering later reading disabilities, 
but the question of whether or not their speech abilities really affect future reading ability 
remains unanswered, according to some. 
Vellutino and Shub (1982) found that learning to read is primarily dependent 
upon the individuals language ability and that reading disabilities seem to stem from one 
or more linguistic deficit.   
Some research has shown that problems in correctly producing speech sounds 
have no effect on phonological awareness or reading.  Catts (1993) studied the 
relationship between success in 1st and 2nd grade reading and speech and language 
problems.  It was found that while children with speech-language impairments were more 
likely to have reading disorders; there was low correlation between articulation disorders 
alone and success in 1st and 2nd grade reading.  Quite the contrary, the students with 
articulation disorders often scored at or above what was considered normal for their age.   
Bishop and Adams (1990) completed a longitudinal study on the relationship 
between specific language impairment, phonological disorders and learning to read.  In 
this study, only a weak correlation between phonological disorders and a later ability to 
read meaningful and nonsense words was found.   
Children with language disorders have been found to score more poorly on 
reading and spelling tasks (Magnusson & Naucler, 1990).  However, in this study which 
 
13 
 
tested various aspects of language ability (phonological, morphological, syntactic, 
lexical, and pragmatic); linguistic awareness (phonological and syntactic); short term 
memory (verbal and nonverbal); information processing strategies; and reading, writing, 
and spelling, a mixed result was found within the children with language disorders.  The 
children with language disorders who possessed metaphonological skills did not have a 
negative impact on their reading as did their peers who had a language disorder and no 
metaphonological skills.   
An investigation by Catts, Fey, Zhang, & Tomblin (1999) found that as many as 
70% of children who are poor readers had a language deficit in kindergarten.  Because 
this study only measured the phonological awareness skills and the oral language abilities 
of its participants, it did not address how many of those children also had co-existing 
phonological or articulation disorders.    
Magnusson and Naucler (1993) found that children with language disorders were 
less able to complete tasks of phonological awareness than a group matched on 
intelligence with no language disorder.  The authors of this study felt that this ruled out 
cognition alone being the determining factor for the acquisition of phonological 
awareness skills.  They posited that there must be some linguistic factor accounting for 
the difference, and questioned whether a phonological deviance might be the problem.   
Phonological Awareness Skills and Reading 
Extensive research has established the link between reading and phonological 
awareness skills (Adams, 1990; Blachman, 1991; Catts, 1991b; Catts & Kahmi, 2005; 
Ehri et al., 2001; Kirby et al., 2003).  This is important because if there is a relationship 
between phonological or articulation disorders and phonological awareness skills, and 
 
14 
 
phonological awareness skills affect reading; then it is possible to identify reading 
problems by identifying phonological and articulation disorders.  When children possess 
phonological awareness skills, they are able to match the sounds that correspond to 
different letters and then use this knowledge to begin decoding words phonetically (Catts 
& Hogan, 2003).   
Bryant and Bradley (1983) state that ?Children who are backward in reading are 
strikingly insensitive to rhyme and alliteration.?  This idea was confirmed by Catts, Fey, 
Zhang, and Tomblin (1999) where they found that 56% of children who were poor 
readers in second grade had phonological awareness problems in kindergarten.  This is 
important in allowing us to develop ways to predict student?s later success in learning to 
read.     
In another study that was conducted longitudinally, skills in rhyme detection, 
alliteration detection, and phoneme detection were found to be linked to later reading 
success (Bryant, et al., 1990).  This study tested the subjects in three different sessions.  
The first session involved tests of rhyme and alliteration detection with the second 
session testing phoneme detection.  The third and final session tested reading skills.  
Results confirmed that phonological awareness skills could be predictive of later reading 
skills.  
 A study by Muter and associates found that phoneme sensitivity in combination 
with letter knowledge were predictive of later reading success (Muter, Hulme, Snowling, 
& Stevenson, 2004).  Still another study was completed by Wimmer and associates, and 
found the affects of phonological awareness (as tested through phonemic awareness) on 
later success in reading and spelling (Wimmer, Landerl, Linortner, & Hummer, 1991).  
 
15 
 
Another similar study that investigated phonological awareness at the beginning of the 
subject?s first school year and reading skills at the end of the first school year found the 
same results (Stuart, & Coltheart, 1988).  However, this study linked phonological 
awareness skills with letter-sound knowledge as a predictor of later reading skills.   
A study by Byrne and Fielding-Barnsley (1989) stated that phonological 
awareness skills benefit children in reading so long as the child has an understanding of 
three things.  First, the child must understand that the phonemes represented by letters are 
also representative of separate segments within each word.  Second, the child must 
understand that those same sounds also occur in other words.  Last, the child must 
understand ?the particular association between the distinguishing letters and phonemes in 
the known word group.?  What this tells us, is that children who possess knowledge of 
these three things will know how to read a small group of words that only differ by a 
single letter, and they will also have an understanding of how those letters represent 
sounds in other words which the children do not know.   
The phonological awareness skill which entails distinguishing different sounds 
has been studied in isolation and linked to reading ability.  A study by Bradley and 
Bryant (1978) found that when children three years apart in chronological age, but 
matched on reading age were compared on auditory discrimination, the younger children 
consistently performed better.  In this study, the children were given three words that 
were similar in the first, middle or last phoneme, and another word that did not match the 
other three.  The children were asked to tell the investigators the one that did not belong 
with the other three.  In addition to confirming the idea that the ability to match words for 
similar sounds is an essential part of reading, this study also did something unique.  By 
 
16 
 
matching the children on reading ability and not on age, this study proved that it was 
reading ability, and not other age related factors (e.g. literacy exposure, experiences, etc) 
that determined the phonological awareness skills.         
Goswami (1990) has studied the phonological awareness task of rhyming and its 
relationship to reading through the use of analogies.  He found that children who are 
better at making analogies from words they are familiar with, to those which they are not 
familiar, are better at the phonological awareness task of rhyming.  In this study a 
phonological awareness task of phoneme deletion was also tested.  The tasks involving 
rhyming showed a much stronger relationship to the children?s abilities to use 
orthographic analogies than did the tasks involving phoneme deletion.   
Ball and Blachman (1991) studied the effects of teaching phoneme awareness in 
addition to letter sounds and names to children of normal intelligence and language skills.  
In this study they found that teaching children to segment words into phonemes, in 
addition to teaching the names of letters and the sounds they make was beneficial to the 
children learning to read.  The children they taught only letter names and sounds to, did 
not fare as well in learning to read as those who were also taught the phonemic awareness 
skills.   
Kirby, et al. (2003) studied the effects of phonological awareness skills and 
naming speed on later reading development.  This study began when the participants 
were just starting kindergarten and concluded when the children were in grade 5.  The 
children were tested on four measures of phonological awareness: sound isolation, 
phoneme elision, blending onset and rime, and blending phonemes.  It was found that 
 
17 
 
phonological awareness was indeed a predictor of later reading ability, however its 
impact was greater in the earlier elementary grades than in the later elementary grades.   
The impact of phonological awareness skills has been found to play a role not 
only in the development of the reading skills of children, but also across the life span as 
demonstrated in the acquisition of reading skills in adults who had previously been 
illiterate.  A study by Durguno-Iu and ?hey (2002) investigated Turkish women just 
beginning to read in Turkish.  Their study found that, in the context of the Turkish 
language, adults gained phonological awareness skills through the process of learning to 
read.  This extends the link of phonological awareness skills and literacy acquisition to 
adults and shows that the continuum is the same for both children and adults.   
While phonological awareness has been found to be linked to success in reading, 
there are studies that show that phonological awareness is not a prerequisite for reading.  
Perfetti and associates found that certain tasks of phonological awareness develop as a 
result of learning to read, therefore making the relationship reciprocal (Perfetti, Beck, 
Bell, and Hughes, 1987; Durguno-Iu  & ?hey , 2002).  Other studies completed on non-
literate adults can confirm this.  A study done on non-literate adults showed that the 
phonological awareness task of sound segmentation does not develop on its own as 
shown by non-literate adults with no alphabetic knowledge (Read, Zhang, Nie, & Ding, 
1986).  Another similar study investigated sound segmentation skills in formerly illiterate 
adults compared with the skills of those who are illiterate (Morais, Bertelson, Cary, & 
Alegria, 1986).  Results showed that the formerly illiterate adults did indeed possess the 
sound segmentation skills whereas the illiterate individuals did not.  Still one more study 
yielded the same results.  Non-literate adults were compared with adults who had learned 
 
18 
 
to read rudimentarily (Morais, Cary, Alegria, & Bertelson, 1979).  Results of the study 
showed that the non-literate adults were unable to add or delete a phoneme at the 
beginning of a non-word whereas the adults who had learned to read had better results.   
Castles & Coltheart (2004) studied the relationship between phonological 
awareness skills and reading.  Their study researched numerous past studies on the topic, 
focusing primarily on longitudinal and training studies.  From their research, they 
concluded that, to date, there have been no studies establishing a link between 
phonological awareness skills and success in future reading.  
Phonological Awareness and Spelling 
 There is also extensive literature indicating a relationship between phonological 
awareness and spelling (Apel, et al., 2004; Ball & Blachman, 1991; Ehri, et al. 2001; 
Lombardino, et al., 1997; Tangel & Blachman, 1992).  Clarke-Klein (1994) suggested 
that children who have phonetic errors (e.g., those who spell ?candle? as ?candol,? or 
?square? as ?skwar?) are likely to possess normal phonological awareness skills and are 
no more likely than other children to have phonological problems.  However, children 
who show non-phonetic or ?bizarre? spelling patterns (e.g., those who spell ?smoke? as 
?scoteser,? or ?crayons? as ?carinsteds?) are more likely to have phonological awareness 
problems.  Clarke-Klein (1994) suggested that children who have histories of severe 
expressive phonological deviations are at risk for these unusual or bizarre type spelling 
errors.  Lombardino et al., (1997) suggested that children who do not exhibit expected 
spelling patterns should be provided with phoneme awareness training. 
 In addition to finding the same results as previous studies relating to the problems 
children with expressive phonological disorders have with spelling, Clarke-Klein and 
 
19 
 
Hodson (1995) found that these children also have less effective strategies for spelling.  
These same children were found to have poorer phonological skills than their same-age 
peers.  The authors concluded, in agreement with past studies, that phonological 
awareness skills increase the ability to phonetically spell words.      
 Silva and Martins (2003) tested the spelling and phonological awareness skills of 
children who were identified as not yet able to read and whose spellings were found to be 
pre-phonetic.  The participants were divided into a control group and an experimental 
group with the experimental group receiving instruction in phonetic spelling.  The 
authors found that after the instruction in spelling, the subjects phonological awareness 
skills were found to be higher than at the outset of the study.  This study is also an 
indicator of the possible reciprocal nature of phonological awareness abilities with the 
development of reading and writing skills.        
Severity Rating Measures of Phonological Disorders 
 A study by Garret and Moran (1992) compared measures of the severity of 
phonological impairment.  This study compared 20 phonologically impaired children 
using 5 different measures of severity: phonological deviancy score (PDS) used in the 
Assessment of Phonological Processes- Revised (Hodson, 1986), percent consonants 
correct (PCC) in connected speech and single words, and perceptual ratings from two 
groups trained differently.  This study found that PCC and the PDS are ?of similar value? 
to the clinician when making decisions about the nature and severity of a client?s 
phonological disorder.  
 
20 
 
III. JUSTIFICATION 
 
 
Several previously reported studies have demonstrated that children with expressive 
phonological disabilities perform poorly on tasks of phonological awareness skills (Bird 
et al., 1995; Catts, 1991b; Catts, Fey, Zhang, & Tomblin, 1999; Cowan & Moran, 1997; 
Magnusson & Naucler, 1993; Vellutino & Shub, 1992; Larivee & Catts, 1999; Rvachew 
et al., 2003; Webster & Plante, 1992).  These findings, however, have been confounded 
by two factors: the presence of concomitant language problems, and the severity of the 
phonological disorder.  For example, Catts (1991b) suggests that children who have pure 
articulation disorders, without language disorders, are not at-risk for later phonological 
awareness difficulties.  On the other hand, Rvachew et al. (2003) reported that children 
with expressive phonological delay, independent of a language deficit, performed poorly 
on tasks of phonological awareness when compared with their peers.  Also, a study by 
Cowan & Moran (1997) suggests that even children with mild articulation errors may 
perform more poorly on phonological awareness tasks than their same age peers with no 
articulation problems.   
Understanding the relationship between phonological awareness and phonological 
disorders is important for at least two reasons.  First, defining the relationship between 
phonological performance and phonological awareness could help determine when 
phonological awareness testing and treatment should be part of the assessment and 
intervention with phonologically impaired children.  Second, despite Castles & Coltheart
 
21 
 
(2004), phonological awareness has been linked to reading problems (Blachman, 1984; 
Blachman & James, 1986; Bradley & Bryant, 1983; Juel, 1988; Juel, Griffith, & Gough, 
1986; Lundberg, Olofsson, & Wall, 1980; Mann, 1984; Mann & Lieberman, 1984; Share, 
Jorm, Maclean, & Matthews, 1984; Stanovich, Cunningham, & Cramer, 1984; Torneus, 
1984; Vellutino & Scanlon, 1987).  Determining those phonologically impaired children 
who are likely to exhibit phonological awareness problems could also provide an early 
indication of children at risk for reading problems.  
 To date evidence that phonological disorders alone, independent of a language 
disorder, are associated with phonological awareness skills, is limited.  While Rvachew et 
al. (2003) isolated the relationship between phonological disorders and phonological 
awareness abilities, the only aspect of language testing used to rule out a concomitant 
language disorder was a test of receptive vocabulary.  Cowan & Moran (1997) also 
reported finding a relationship between phonological awareness and articulation disorders 
independent of language disorders.  However that finding was not the main focus of the 
study and was based on a very small sub-group of participants.   
The present study proposes to investigate whether children with mild and 
moderate phonological impairment and no coexisting language disorder perform 
differently than children with normal language and phonology on tasks of phonological 
awareness skills.  There have also been few studies examining the relationship between 
phonological awareness skills and phonological disorders using standardized measures of 
phonological awareness skills.    
The present study was designed to investigate the phonological awareness skills 
of children who exhibit mild and moderate articulation disorders as compared with their 
 
22 
 
typically articulating same age peers.  In this study a comparison was made on the 
performance on a standardized test of phonological awareness skills between six-year-
olds divided and classified on the basis of their performance on the Assessment of 
Phonological Processes-Revised (Hodson, 1986). The following questions were 
addressed: 
1) Do six-year-old children who exhibit mild and moderate phonological 
disorders and no language problems differ significantly from those with normal 
articulation on standardized tasks of rhyming, incomplete words, sound 
sequencing, and sound deletion? 
2) Do six-year-old children who exhibit mild and moderate phonological 
disorders and no language problems differ significantly from those with normal 
articulation on non-standardized tasks of phoneme counting, rhyming and 
blending? 
3) Is there a difference in the performance of these children on the various types 
of tasks used to assess the phonological awareness skills of six-year-old 
children? 
 
23 
 
IV. METHOD 
Participants 
The participants in the present study were 24 six-year-old students (plus or minus two 
months at the time of testing) who attended Smith Station Primary School or Beulah 
Elementary in Lee County, Alabama. The participants ranged in age from 5;11 to 7;2.  
Twenty-three participants were Caucasian, one was African-American.  The African-
American participant did not exhibit features of African-American English on any test or 
in interaction with the examiner.  All participants passed a pure-tone audiometric 
screening test at 25 dB HL ISO for 500, 1000, 2000, and 4000 Hz bilaterally (ANSI, 
1989).  All participants also participated in an informal oral-mechanism exam consisting 
of the following tasks:  tongue elevation, tongue lateralization, tongue depression, lip 
protrusion, lip retraction, velum elevation, and notation of any abnormal dentition.  No 
abnormalities were noted with any of the participants.  Participants who were receiving 
special education services other than speech and language (e.g., Emotionally Conflicted, 
Mentally Retarded, Multiple Disabilities, and Specific Learning Disabilities) were 
excluded from the present study.  All participants were administered the Clinical 
Evaluation of Language Fundamentals-Fourth Edition, Screening Test (CELF-4 
Screening) (Semel, Wiig, and Secord, 2003) and the Assessment of Phonological 
Processes-Revised (APP-R) (Hodson, 1986).  The Clinical Evaluation of Language 
Fundamentals-Fourth Edition, Screening Test (CELF-4 Screening) was administered in
 
24 
 
order to rule out a language disorder.  This particular screener was found to over-identify 
children as having language disorders when, in fact, 
they did not.  The Assessment of Phonological Processes-Revised (APP-R) was 
administered in order to assess the participant?s phonology. 
Based on performance on those two tests, the participants were assigned to two 
groups of 12.  
Group one (mild to moderate articulation disorders) met or exceeded the criterion score 
on the CELF-4 Screener and exhibited one or more articulation errors and scored in the 
mildly to moderately impaired range on the APP-R.(See appendix A for individual 
scores).  Passing the CELF-4 Screener involves achieving a ?Criterion Score? as 
determined in the test construction by age.  This group consisted of 2 females and 10 
males ranging in age from 5;11 to 7;0 with an average age of 6;5. 
  Group two (control) met or exceeded the criterion score on the CELF-4 screener 
and did not exhibit articulation/phonological errors.  This group consisted of 6 females 
and 6 males ranging in age from 6;3 to 7;2 with an average age of 6;9. 
Alabama has considerable resources in training teachers to incorporate 
phonological awareness into the reading and pre-reading curriculum. While both schools 
were in the same school district (Lee County, Alabama), there were two different 
methods in the instruction of reading.  As a result seven students were included in each 
group from school one and five students were included in each group from school two.  
Procedure 
 Each participant was administered the Test of Phonological Awareness Skills 
(TOPAS) (Newcomer & Barenbaum, 2003).  The TOPAS is a standardized test of 
 
25 
 
phonological awareness skills.  The test consists of four subtests:  Rhyming, Incomplete 
Words, Sound Sequencing, and Sound Deletion.   
The rhyming portion involves the investigator reading a phrase with a word 
missing.  The participant is asked to supply the missing word that should rhyme with a 
stressed word in the phrase.  For example, ?The frog sat on the ____[log].?   
The incomplete word portion involves the investigator reading a word with a 
syllable or phoneme missing.  The participant is required to give the investigator the 
entire target word.  For example, ?I?m going to say part of the word, I want you to tell me 
what the whole word I was trying to say is.  ?abbage? (target word: Cabbage).    
The sound sequencing portion involves the investigator training the participant to 
use different colored blocks which represent syllables.  Then the participant is asked to 
blend the syllables when the investigator places them in different combinations.  For 
example, ?The blue block says ?ab? and the yellow block says ?az.? How would it sound 
if we put the blocks in this order: [blue, yellow, blue, yellow]??   
The sound deletion subtest requires the participant to say what a word given by 
the investigator would be if a sound was deleted.  For example, ?Say ?stop? without the 
?s.??  
From the raw scores obtained from these four subtests, a standard score is given.  
Also, once standard scores are determined for each of the subtests, a composite score can 
be obtained using each of the four standard scores.   
In order to compare the results of the present study with previous investigations 
that did not use a standardized test such as the TOPAS, participants were also 
administered three non-standardized measures.  These measures were similar to those 
 
26 
 
used by Cowan and Moran in 1997.  This assessment consists of three subtests: Phoneme 
Counting, Rhyming, and Phoneme Blending.  The scores used to compare the non-
standardized subtests were simply a percentage of each subtest the participants got 
correct.       
The phoneme counting portion of the assessment required the participant to listen 
to words and sounds (C, V, CV, VC, or CVC) and count by tapping with a pencil how 
many sounds the word or sound contained.     
The rhyming portion required the participant to simply say ?yes? or ?no? to 
whether or not to simple words rhymed.  For example, ?do fun and sun rhyme?? 
The phoneme blending portion required the participant to blend between two and 
three phonemes in to familiar words.  For example, ?what word does r-e-d make?? 
Each participant was tested individually in a quiet room of his/her school by the 
investigator and a graduate student of speech-language pathology.  The graduate student 
was in the middle of her last semester of graduate school and had completed all of the 
course work related to articulation and language assessment.  The investigator and 
graduate student administered the first 50% of the assessments together.  The two were in 
agreement on 100% of responses.  Because they appeared to be well calibrated to what 
was expected on each task, the two examiners scored the remaining subjects separately.  
The participant?s parents or guardians were given an informed consent form that was 
signed prior to participation.  The participants themselves were also administered a verbal 
assent informing them that if, at any time during the testing, they did not want to 
complete it, they would be taken back to their classroom immediately.  All subtests of the 
TOPAS were administered in one session.   
 
27 
 
During assessment, the subjects were seated at a table with the examiner seated 
behind the table.  This was done in order to eliminate visual cues.  The investigator 
transcribed and a second-year Master?s student in speech-language pathology monitored 
the child?s responses while seeing the transcriptions 50% of the time through live 
observation.  In cases where the graduate student assistant was simultaneously scoring, 
she was seated next to the investigator.  The tests were then scored according to the 
procedure given by the test authors. 
The standard scores achieved by both groups on each of the four portions of the 
TOPAS were compared by means of a two-factor (group x task) anaysis of variance 
(ANOVA) with repeated measures.  The composite TOPAS scores for each group were 
subjected to a two-tailed t-test.  Finally, the percent of correct responses for each group 
on the three non-standardized phonological awareness tasks were subjected to a two-
factor (group x task) analysis of variance (ANOVA) with repeated measures.
 
28 
 
V. RESULTS 
 
 
The means and standard deviations of the scaled scores on each subtest on the 
TOPAS are presented for both groups in Table 1.    
Table 1. Means and standard deviations (in parentheses) of scaled scores on each 
subtest of the TOPAS for phonologically impaired and non-impaired groups.  
 Phonologically 
Impaired 
Non-impaired Total 
Rhyming 9.83    (2.82) 12.58   (2.07) 11.21  (2.74) 
Incomplete Word 10.92  (2.94) 12.58   (1.83) 11.75  (2.49) 
Sound Sequencing 11.83  (3.74) 15.75   (2.34) 13.79  (3.57) 
Phoneme Deletion 11.42  (4.23) 14.42   (3.85) 12.92  (4.15) 
 
The participants? performance on the TOPAS was subjected to a two-factor 
(group x task) ANOVA with repeated measures. The results of the ANOVA are presented 
in Table 2.  
Table 2.  Summary of Analysis of Variance for Scores on the Subtests of the TOPAS 
Source SS df MS F P 
Between Groups 697.3331 23    
Factor A 192.6669 1 192.6669 8.399 .0083 
Sub. Within Groups 504.6662 22 22.93938   
Within Groups 447.9998 72    
Factor B 97.08348 3 32.36116 6.3661 .0007 
A X B 15.41617 3 5.13872 1.0109 .3936 
B X Sub. Within Groups 335.5002 66 5.08334   
Total 1145.333 95    
 
 
Results of the ANOVA indicated that the non-impaired group performed significantly 
better (p.=.008) than  the phonologically impaired group on the TOPAS.  The ANOVA 
also indicated that there was a significant difference (p=.0007) among the scores attained 
 
29 
 
on the subtests of the TOPAS.  There was no significant interaction between the group 
and task factors. A Newman-Keuls post-hoc analysis was performed to identify 
significant differences among the four TOPAS subtests. The results of the Newman-
Keuls are presented in Table 3.  
Table 3. Q values for the Newman-Keuls comparisons among subtests. 
 Sub-test I 
Rhyming 
Subtest II 
Incomp. 
Word  
Subtest IV 
Phon. Del. 
Subtest III 
Snd.Sequencing 
Sub-test I 
Rhyming 
 1.177 3.713 5.614 * 
Subtest II 
Incomp. Word 
  2.535 4.437* 
Subtest IV 
Phon. Del 
   1.901 
 
* Indicates significant at the .01 level.  
From Table 3 it can be seen that that scores on the sound sequencing subtest were 
significantly higher than scores on the rhyming and the incomplete word sub-tests. No 
other significant differences were detected. It should be noted, however, that the 
difference between the phoneme deletion subtest and the rhyming subtest was very close 
to significant at the .05 level. The Q value obtained when comparing these two subtests 
was 3.713  and the criterion level for significance at .05 was 3.737.   
Participants were also compared on the TOPAS composite score. The non-
impaired group demonstrated a mean composite score of 124.083 (S.D.=12.36) compared 
to a mean score of 106.917 (S.D. = 18.84) for the phonologically impaired group. This 
indicates a better performance by the non-impaired group. A two-tailed t test indicated 
that this difference was significant (t=-2.647, df=22, p.0147).   
 
30 
 
In addition to the standardized TOPAS, the participants in the present study were 
also administered three non-standardized assessments of phonological awareness which 
have been used in previous investigations. These measures included tasks of rhyming, 
phoneme counting and phoneme blending.     
The mean and standard deviations of the percentage of correct responses on each 
of these tasks for both groups are presented in Table 4.   
Table 4. The mean and standard deviations of the percentage of correct responses 
on each of three non-standardized phonological awareness tasks for two groups.  
 
 Phonologically 
Impaired 
Non-impaired Total 
Phoneme 
Counting 
60.17 (26.28) 76.00 (14.82) 68.08  (21.90) 
Rhyming 75.83 (13.95) 85.42 (7.82) 80.63  (11.84) 
Blending 80.00 (26.26) 97.58 (3.39) 88.79  (19.96) 
 
  The performance of the participants on these non-standardized tasks was 
subjected to a two-factor (group x task) ANOVA with repeated measures. The results of 
the ANOVA are presented in Table 5.  
Table 5.  Summary of Analysis of Variance for Non-Standardized Tasks of Phonological 
Awareness 
Source SS df MS F P 
Between Groups 16839.34 23    
Factor A 3698.001 1 3698.001 6.1908 .0209 
Sub. Within Groups 13141.33 22 597.3334   
Within Groups 12830.68 48    
Factor B 5222.581 2 2611.291 15.5353 <.0001 
A X B 212.2578 2 106.1289 .6314 .5366 
B X Sub. Within Groups 7395.838 44 168.0872   
Total 29670.01 71    
  
 
31 
 
Results of the ANOVA indicated that, as on the TOPAS, the non-impaired group 
performed significantly better (p.=.021) than the phonologically impaired group.  The 
ANOVA also indicated that there was a significant difference (p= <.0001) among the 
scores attained on these three phonological awareness tasks. There was no significant 
interaction between the group and task factors. A Newman-Keuls post-hoc analysis was 
performed to identify significant differences among the three non-standardized tasks. The 
results of the Newman-Keuls are presented in Table 6.  
Table 6.  Q values for the Newman-Keuls comparisons among three non-
standardized phonological awareness tasks 
 
 Task I Phoneme 
Counting 
Task II Rhyming Task III Blending 
Task I 
Phoneme 
Counting 
 4.740** 7.827** 
Task II 
Rhyming 
 
  3.087* 
* Significant at .05 
** Significant at .01 
 
From Table 6 it can be seen than all three tasks differ significantly from each 
other with the best performance on sound blending, next best on rhyming and the poorest 
performance on phoneme counting.
 
32 
 
VI. DISCUSSION 
 
Previous research has demonstrated that children with severe phonological 
disorders are more likely to exhibit difficulty with phonological awareness tasks than are 
children without phonological impairments. (Bird et al., 1995; Catts, 1991b; Catts, Fey, 
Zhang, & Tomblin, 1999; Cowan & Moran, 1997; Magnusson & Naucler, 1993; 
Vellutino & Shub, 1992; Larivee & Catts, 1999; Rvachew et al., 2003; Webster & Plante, 
1992).  Some authors (Bishop & Adams, 1990) have suggested that that children with 
children with phonological disorders and accompanying language problems are more 
likely to experience problems in phonological awareness than children with phonological 
problems and no accompanying language problems. The results of the present study 
indicate that children with mild and moderate phonological disorders independent of any 
coexisting language disorder performed more poorly on both standardized and non-
standardized tests of phonological awareness than did a control group of children without 
phonological errors.   This finding supports the suggestion by Cowan and Moran (1997) 
that children are at risk for problems with phonological awareness with much milder 
degrees of expressive phonological impairment than previously thought.   The results of 
the present study also support the findings of Bird, Bishop and Freeman (1995) and 
Rvachew and associates (2003) that phonological disorders independent of a language 
disorder can affect the children?s phonological awareness skills. This is an important
 
33 
 
finding because of the extensive literature which links phonological awareness abilities 
and later abilities in reading and spelling (Blachman, 1984; Blachman & James, 1986; 
Bradley & Bryant, 1983;  Ehri, et.al, 2001; Juel, 1988; Juel, Griffith, & Gough, 1986; 
Lundberg, Olofsson, & Wall, 1980; Mann, 1984; Mann & Lieberman, 1984; Share, Jorm, 
Maclean, & Matthews, 1984; Stanovich, Cunningham, & Cramer, 1984; Torneus, 1984; 
Vellutino & Scanlon, 1987).  A child?s academic success in any subject area is ultimately 
based upon their ability to read.  Therefore, it is important to identify children who are at 
risk for reading problems at the youngest age possible.  Knowing that children with 
phonological disorders are at risk for phonological awareness deficits, school personnel 
should, at the very least, closely monitor the reading development of children referred for 
articulation disorders.  Because phonological awareness assessments are generally not 
lengthy and tend to be ?game-like? in nature they are quick and easy to administer. Such 
evaluations could easily be added to the typical speech and language assessments 
performed in school settings providing valuable predictive information regarding the 
potential for later reading problems. Additionally, the fact that a readily available 
standardized test such as the TOPAS appeared to yield the same results as those non-
standardized tasks used in research, the present study suggests that such tests could be 
employed in routine phonological assessments to provide the benefits of a standardized 
test.  
One cautionary note should be sounded.   With regard to the performance on the 
TOPAS it must be pointed out that, although the mild to moderately phonologically 
impaired children in the present study performed more poorly on tasks of phonological 
awareness as compared with the control group, they did not, in most cases, score outside 
 
34 
 
the average range for their age group according to the test?s normative data.  As stated in 
the TOPAS manual, ?Norms for the subtests are presented in terms of standard scores 
called scaled scores having a mean of 10 and a standard deviation of 3.? (Newcomer & 
Barenbaum, 2003).  According to the manual, this distribution is used on many other 
aptitude tests.  From this information, one can then compute an ?Ability Score.?  This 
score has a mean of 100 and a standard deviation of 15.  The authors of the TOPAS 
consider an ability score of 90 or above to be ?Average.?  All but three (Subjects 1, 3, 
and 15) scored in the average range for their age.  This means that all but the three 
mentioned participants achieved an ?Ability Score? of 90 or above.  This is consistent 
with a observation reported by Bird, Bishop and Freeman (1995) that children with mild 
or moderate articulation impairments generally do not score lower than what is 
considered normal for their age.  It is not clear that the participants who performed lower 
on the TOPAS but were still within the average range would be seriously at risk for 
reading problems.  This appears to be an area for future research.  
One possible reason that the phonologically impaired children in the present study 
were still within the average range on the TOPAS is that, as mentioned previously, both 
groups receive phonological awareness training as part of their curriculum.  School A 
incorporated a traditional approach to reading using the Dynamic Indicators of Basic 
Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS) assessment methods (University of Oregon Center on 
Teaching and Learning, retrieved January 21, 2006).  These include Initial Sound 
Fluency (the child?s ability to produce the initial sound of a word), Phoneme 
Segmentation Fluency  (ability to produce individual sounds within a given word), 
Nonsense Word Fluency (letter-sound correspondence as well as blending ability), and 
 
35 
 
finally Oral Reading Fluency (reading grade-level texts).   School B was involved in its 
first year of the new ?Alabama First Reading Initiative.?  This initiative 
(http://www.alsde.edu/html/sections/section_detail.asp?section=90&footer=sections), 
begins at the Kindergarten level.  The initiatives explicit goals include providing 
?linguistically-rich environments that develop phonemic awareness through play with the 
sounds of the language? as well as, ?Systematic, explicit phonics instruction that is 
engaging and involves students in building and decoding words.?    
(http://www.alsde.edu/html/sections/section_detail.asp?section=90&footer=sections).   
As stated in the Method section, participants were matched for pre-reading program. 
Although it is not the primary focus of the present study, it is interesting to examine the 
performance of the participants in relation to the type of pre-reading program in which 
they participated. Because the number of children in each group are small and unequal 
(14 from School A, seven normal, seven phonologically impaired; 10 from School B, five 
normal, five phonologically impaired), for purposes of the present study a simple 
comparison of means was used to make this comparison. As seen in Table 7, the mean 
scores obtained by those participants in the DIBELS program were consistently lower 
(while still very close) than those obtained by participants in the Alabama Reading 
Initiative. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
36 
 
Table 7.  A Comparison of Standardized and Non-Standardized Phonological 
Awareness Scores from Two Schools in Lee County, Alabama 
 School A (Alabama 
Reading Initiative School) 
(N=14) 
School B (DIBELS 
Method School) (N=10) 
Average Non-Standardized 
Phoneme Counting Score 
71.71429 61.6 
Average Non-Standardized 
Rhyming Score 
82.5 78 
Average Non-Standardized 
Phoneme Blending Score 
89.35714 88 
Average Standardized 
Rhyming Score 
11.42857 10.9 
Average Standardized 
Incomplete Words Score 
12.71429 10.4 
Average Standardized Sound 
Sequencing Score 
14.78571 12.4 
Average Standardized 
Phoneme Deletion Score 
13.35714 11.3 
 
Another purpose of the present study was to compare the performance of the 
participants on the individual phonological awareness tasks that made up the standardized 
and non-standardized assessments.  When looking at the non-standardized subtests: 
rhyming, phoneme counting, and blending, it is interesting to see that students performed 
best on blending, then on rhyming, and lastly on counting.  As addressed previously, 
blending requires analysis at the level of the phoneme, and rhyming at the level of the 
syllable.  This would contradict the previously mentioned norms for the way 
phonological awareness develops.  However, another plausible explanation would be that 
this skill-that of sound blending- is one heavily drilled in the two different elementary 
school?s reading programs.  Both schools focused on their students? ability to blend 
sounds together to make non-sense words.   Therefore, it is possible that this skill has 
been learned, and did not come into occurrence implicitly through natural development, 
 
37 
 
but because of explicit teaching.  This idea would confirm the research that states that 
phonological awareness skills can, in fact, be taught.  
The performance of both groups of children on the standardized assessment 
(TOPAS) was uniform in a couple of ways.  First of all, both of the group?s scores rank 
the tasks in the same order of difficulty, which as previously mentioned, goes against 
what is known about development.  Rhyming, the task found to be most difficult by both 
groups, is generally accepted to be the earliest developing phonological awareness skill 
out of the ones assessed by the TOPAS.  The method of assessing rhyming ability was 
rhyme supply, however this method also required some semantic knowledge.  The 
participants were required not only to supply a word that rhymed with a word, but also 
one that was semantically appropriate given the context (e.g., the fat CAT wore an ugly 
___[hat]).  This could have increased the difficulty level, thus being the cause of why the 
participants all scored comparatively lower on this subtest than on the other, typically 
later developing ones.   
Confirming this hypothesis is that children did not find the rhyming task used in 
the non-standardized assessment to be the most difficult.  The rhyming task used in the 
non-standardized assessment is that of rhyme detection (e.g., do fun and sun rhyme?).  
While the children still performed better on the phoneme blending tasks (on both non-
standardized and standardized assessments), rhyming was at least improved when it was 
a task that did not require semantic processing.   
The task the children performed highest on was sound sequencing.  In this task, 
the investigator assigned different sounds to different colored blocks (e.g., the red block 
says /a/ and the blue block says /b/).  The children were then required to make nonsense 
 
38 
 
phonemic combinations with the blocks such as ?b-a-b-a? (the child would then arrange 
the blocks as blue, red, blue, red).  While, at first glance this task would appear to be 
more difficult than rhyming due to the processing being at the phoneme level, there is an 
alternate explanation for the participants performing so well on this task.  One, there is 
visual cuing involved.  The assessment provides for training with the participant, teaching 
them in a concrete way that red says ?a? and blue says ?b.?  Two, as mentioned earlier, 
the children at both schools had been taught to blend sounds to make nonsense words, so 
this was not a foreign concept to them.    
The tasks that were used to test phonological awareness in these children, both 
standardized and non-standardized required different types of processing on the part of 
the child.  The rhyming tasks require analysis at the level of the syllable, where as the 
phoneme deletion tasks, and sound blending tasks require analysis at the level of the 
phoneme.  This further displays that children with even mild or moderate degrees of 
phonological impairment score lower on items which require them analyzing of the 
sounds of our language, which involves attending to and manipulating (Catts, 1991b) 
phonemes.  Five of the twelve participants in the phonologically impaired group had 
three or fewer class errors.  The most common errors were in the liquid (phonemes /r/ and 
/l/) category.  While some of the children exhibited errors that at first glance might 
indicate a more severe phonological impairment (Seven of the 12 still exhibited 
consonant sequence omission, typically thought to be suppressed by age 3 (Stoel-
Gammon & Dunn, 1985). However, these children often only exhibited one or two 
instances of each of the earlier suppressed processes leaving most of their articulation 
errors falling under the category of liquids.  Typically, a child who has a problem with /r/ 
 
39 
 
would be less likely to picked up on a school speech pathologist?s caseload, especially at 
the age of six.  However, as this study shows, children with mild and moderate 
articulation problems are already showing a discrepancy with their phonological 
awareness abilities as compared with their same age peers.  
The results of this study show that, along with many others (Bird et al., 1995; 
Catts, 1991b; Catts, Fey, Zhang, & Tomblin, 1999; Cowan & Moran, 1997; Magnusson 
& Naucler, 1993; Vellutino & Shub, 1992; Larivee & Catts, 1999; Rvachew et al., 2003; 
Webster & Plante, 1992), phonological impairments can affect a child?s ability to 
manipulate and analyze the sounds of speech.  However, this study was different in that it 
utilized standardized testing as a one of its methods of measuring phonological awareness 
skills.  
Given the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) legislation enacted January 8, 2002 
(ASHA, retrieved January 21, 2006), it would be beneficial for these schools to begin 
testing children referred for even mild and moderate articulation disorders for 
phonological awareness skills as a means of predicting and addressing future problems in 
reading or writing.  By predicting, and ideally circumventing future reading problems, it 
would be possible to raise a schools percentage of students who are ?proficient? 
according to NCLB. 
Limitations of the study are the small number of participants and the two different 
reading programs that these students participated in.  Ideally, one would have a large 
enough number of participants to gather the data in one school, or even to be able to 
compare the students of different reading programs, such as the two mentioned by this 
study.  It should also be mentioned that the screening used to rule out the language 
 
40 
 
disorder is not a comprehensive measure of both expressive and receptive language.  
According to the norming information provided by the CELF-4 Screener (Semel, Wiig, 
and Secord, 2003), the screener was found to over identify children as having language 
disorders, when in fact they did not, however, a more comprehensive language 
assessment involving standardized and non-standardized methods would be ideal because 
of the information that could be gained regarding their language skills.      
Another potential limitation of the present study was that the articulation impaired 
group included only two females while the control group included six females and six 
males. Very little is known about gender differences in the development of phonological 
awareness skills however it has been demonstrated that girls tend be slightly ahead of 
boys in phonological development, particularly up to age six (Kenny & Prather, 1986; 
Smit, Hand, Freilinger, Bernthal and Bird , 1990).  On the tasks of phonological 
awareness, the females in the phonologically disordered group were not the highest 
scorers on either standardized or non-standardized tasks of phonological awareness.  So 
despite the fact that the groups were not evenly balanced for gender, it does not appear 
that gender can account for the differences between the two groups.  Informal comparison 
of the performance of the female participants to the male participants in the control group 
also does not appear to suggest any systematic differences between genders.   
The study was also limited as to the order in which the subtests of the TOPAS 
were administered.  The investigator administered the subtests in the order they appeared 
in the testing booklet.  In this particular assessment, rhyming was always first.  For the 
non-standardized assessment, the order was randomized thus eliminating this as the cause 
of the difference in the performance on the different tasks.  With the TOPAS, it is 
 
41 
 
possible that the reason the children did not perform as well as expected on the rhyming 
(as compared with what is expected developmentally) because it was always done first 
meaning it could have influenced performance on the other tasks.   
The present study raises several issues that suggest a need for additional research.  
Among these issues are the following:  
In the present study participants with mild and moderate phonological disorders 
performed more poorly on phonological awareness tasks than those with no phonological 
impairment. However, the impaired group was still in the average range according to the 
TOPAS.  The effects of such an apparently mild delay in phonological abilities on 
reading is not clear and merits further investigation. 
The results of the present study raise the possibility that different reading 
readiness programs may have differing effects on improving the phonological awareness 
skills of children.  A comparison of such programs in terms of the development 
phonological awareness skills would be of interest.    
Although the presence of reduced phonological awareness skills in children with 
mild and moderate phonological impairments has now been demonstrated in at least two 
studies, the numbers are still small and the distribution of participants geographically 
limited. Larger scale studies are needed before wide application of these findings can be 
fully encouraged.  
 
42 
 
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48 
 
APPENDICES 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
49 
 
APPENDIX A 
 
 
Note:  Subject 2 was dropped due to failing the CELF-4 Screener, and Subjects 7 & 13 
were dropped due to absences.  In the CELF column, the first number indicates the 
participants standard score, while the number in parenthesis indicates the criterion score 
for that participant based on their age.  ?The APP-R column has their ?Phonological 
Deviancy Score? as determined by the scoring methods on that particular assessment. 
The abbreviations ?mi? represent a ?mild? score and ?mo? represent a ?moderate? score.  
The errors column gives the type of errors as indicated on the score sheet of the APP-R.  
*The numbers represent the following:  1=Syllable Omission, 2=Consonant Sequence 
Omission, 3=Prevocalic Singleton Omission, 4=Postvocalic Singleton Omission, 
5=Strident Deficiencies, 6=Velar Obstruent Deficiencies, 7=Liquid(l) Deficiencies, 
8=Liquid(r) Deficiencies, 9=Nasal Deficiencies, 10=Glide Deficiencies. 
Subject  Gender DOB CELF APP-R? Errors* 
1 Male 11/16/99 14(12) 19.8 mi 1,2,5,8,10 
3 Male 12/11/98 14(14) 25.7 mo 1,2,5,6,7,10 
4 Male 12/08/98 14(14) 15.45 mi 6 
5 Male 10/30/98 20(16) 26.42 mo 5,8 
6 Female 11/07/99 16(12) 24.37 mo 5,7,8 
14 Male 10/06/99 14(12) 25.32 mo 2,4,5,8,10 
15 Male 01/10/00 11(11) 24.38 mo 2,4,5,6,7,8 
16 Male 08/26/99 18(12) 23.61 mo 2,4,5,8 
17 Female 05/16/99 22(14) 17.2 mi 2,4,5,6,8 
18 Male 08/27/99 15(14) 19.93 mo 2,4,5,6,8 
20 Male 07/20/99 19(12) 15.25 mi 2 
23 Male 08/31/99 12(12) 15 mi str. distortions 
8 Female 09/14/98 19(16) 0 NONE 
9 Male 09/25/98 23(16) 0 NONE 
10 Male 10/07/98 16(16) 0 NONE 
11 Female 04/28/99 14(14) 0 NONE 
12 Male 01/28/99 23(14) 0 NONE 
19 Male 01/19/99 23(14) 0 NONE 
21 Female 04/18/99 19(14) 0 NONE 
22 Male 01/09/99 20(14) 0 NONE 
24 Female 03/29/99 16(14) 0 NONE 
25 Male 02/02/99 16(14) 0 NONE 
26 Female 08/31/99 23(12) 0 NONE 
27 Female 07/28/99 19(12) 0 NONE 
 
50 
 
APPENDIX B 
 
 
NS-PC=Non-Standardized Assessment, Phoneme Counting; NS-RY=Non-Standardized 
Assessment, Rhyming; NS-BL=Non-Standardized Assessment, Phoneme Blending; S-
RY=Standardized Assessment, Rhyming; S-IW=Standardized Assessment, Incomplete 
Words; S-SS=Standardized Assessment, Sound Sequencing; S-PD=Standardized 
Assessment, Phoneme Deletion; Ability Score is the score obtained from all scores on the 
standardized assessment (TOPAS). 
 
 
 
Sub# Group DOB 
NS-
PC 
NS-
RY 
NS-
BL 
S-
RY 
S-
IW 
S-
SS 
S-
PD 
Ability 
Score 
1 Artic 11/16/99 28 65 53 6 8 9 9 87 
3 Artic 12/11/98 72 65 80 6 8 6 6 77 
4 Artic 12/08/98 72 75 93 11 8 12 8 98 
5 Artic 10/30/98 52 85 96 10 12 15 14 118 
6 Artic 11/07/99 30 60 83 12 11 9 9 102 
14 Artic 10/06/99 16 70 33 8 14 7 7 93 
15 Artic 01/10/00 70 50 30 6 8 12 7 88 
16 Artic 08/26/99 82 95 100 14 14 16 19 138 
17 Artic 05/16/99 94 80 100 11 15 9 15 117 
18 Artic 08/27/99 38 90 96 13 13 16 13 125 
20 Artic 07/20/99 86 85 100 12 13 16 15 127 
23 Artic 08/31/99 82 90 96 9 7 15 15 113 
8 Normal 09/14/98 80 85 96 12 10 12 14 113 
9 Normal 09/25/98 88 95 100 14 12 15 15 127 
10 Normal 10/07/98 74 70 93 9 11 12 8 100 
11 Normal 04/28/99 52 90 90 15 13 16 14 130 
12 Normal 01/28/99 68 90 96 14 11 18 16 132 
19 Normal 01/19/99 88 90 100 13 13 16 17 132 
21 Normal 04/18/99 96 90 100 14 16 16 17 138 
22 Normal 01/09/99 80 85 100 11 14 14 10 115 
24 Normal 03/29/99 90 90 100 12 13 15 17 128 
25 Normal 02/02/99 64 85 96 9 14 17 8 113 
26 Normal 08/31/99 50 70 100 13 10 19 10 120 
27 Normal 07/28/99 82 85 100 15 14 19 17 142 
 
51 
 
APPENDIX C 
 
Phoneme Blending Subtest 
 
Subject #:_____ Group:_______ Date:_________ Test #:________ 
Examiner:_________________    Time to Administer:______________ 
 
Directions:  Tell me what word we would have if these sounds were put together.   
Examples:  d-o, b-all, b-e-d 
Section 1: 
  response       response 
1.  a-t  _______     6.  u-p  _______ 
  
2.  th-e  _______     7.  b-ee _______ 
3.  z-oo _______     8.  g-o  _______ 
4.  i-f  _______     9.  t-o  _______ 
5.  o-n  _______     10.  s-ew _______ 
 
 
Section 2: 
  response       response 
1.  st-ep _______     6.  gr-een _______ 
2.  f-at  _______     7.  ch-ip _______ 
3.  fl-ag _______     8.  th-in _______ 
4.  l-ong _______     9.  m-ilk _______ 
5.  j-ump _______     10.  sl-ide _______ 
 
 
Section 3: 
  response       response 
1.  c-a-t _______     6.  r-e-d _______ 
2.  d-e-sk _______     7.  y-e-ll _______ 
3.  v-a-n _______     8.  m-a-n _______ 
4.  h-ou-se _______     9.  b-ir-d _______ 
5.  w-a-sh _______     10.  c-u-t _______ 
 
 
Total number correct = ________ out of 30 = ________ % 
 
 
 
52 
 
APPENDIX D 
 
Phoneme Counting Subtest 
Subject #:_____Group:_______ Date:_________ Test #:________ 
Examiner:_________________    Time to Administer:______________ 
Directions:  We are going to play a listening and tapping game today.  I?m going to say some 
words and sounds and tap them after I say them.  Listen, so you?ll see how to play the game.   
Examples:  /u/, boo, boot; /ae/, as, had; /o/, toe, tall; /i/, ma, cut. 
Directions:  Now we are ready to play the real game.  I?ll say a word or sound, but I won?t tap it 
because you know how to play the game yourself.  So, you say the word after me then tap it.  
After each word, be sure to put your pencil down so I?ll know you?ve finished tapping.   
   response      response 
1.  is   _______   27.  /au/  _______ 
2.  /?/   _______   28.  /U/  _______ 
3.  my   _______   29.  /toys/  _______ 
4.  toy   _______   30.  cake  _______ 
5.  /da0 /   _______   31.  cool  _______ 
6.  /i/   _______   32.  /e/   _______ 
7.  /soap/  _______   33.  Ed   _______ 
8.  /I/   _______   34.  cup  _______ 
9.  his   _______   35.  at   _______ 
10.  pout  _______   36.  book  _______ 
11.  mine  _______   37.  lay  _______ 
12.  out  _______   38.  /o/   _______ 
13.  red  _______   39.  /?/   _______ 
14.  /?/  _______   40.  give  _______ 
15.  cough  _______   41.  chew  _______ 
16.  pot  _______   42.  wing  _______ 
17.  /u/   _______   43.  Joe  _______ 
18.  heat  _______   44.  yam  _______ 
19.  he   _______   45.  shirt  _______ 
20.  /a/   _______   46.  this  _______ 
21.  pa   _______   47.  blue  _______  
22.  mat  _______   48.  snow  _______ 
23.  /t?/   _______   49.  bath  _______ 
24.  so   _______   50.  grow  _______ 
25.  /ai/  _______ 
26.  up   _______ 
 
Total number correct = __________ out of 50 = _______% 
 
53 
 
APPENDIX E 
 
Rhyming Subtest 
 
Subject #:_____ Group:_______ Date:_________ Test #:________ 
Examiner:_________________    Time to Administer:______________ 
 
Directions:  Do you know what a rhyme is?  A rhyme is ?words that sound the same at 
the end.?  I?m going to say two words and you say ?yes? if they rhyme or ?no? if they do 
not rhyme. 
 
Examples:  cat/hat, man/fan, child?s name with rhyme 
Counterexamples:  run/green, bag/bat, dog/mall. 
 
    response 
1.  pig/big   ____________ 
2.  gum/sum   ____________ 
3.  sun/stove   ____________ 
4.  sandal/candle  ____________ 
5.  thing/rug   ____________ 
6.  buzz/fuzz   ____________ 
7.  mat/hat   ____________ 
8.  cub/come   ____________ 
9.  yellow/fellow  ____________ 
10.  top/cop   ____________ 
11.  watch/wish  ____________ 
12.  lathe/fade   ____________ 
13.  train/mean  ____________ 
14.  chair/bear   ____________ 
15.  bike/kite   ____________ 
16.  the/she   ____________ 
17.  cage/maid   ____________ 
18.  bath/half   ____________ 
19.  yell/mess   ____________ 
20.  snake/lake  ____________ 
 
 
Total number correct = ______ out of 20 =________%
 
54