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The relationship between phonological awareness, spelling and reading abilities was studied comparing first grade (N=39) Spanish-speaking skilled and less skilled readers' performance on three measures: phoneme segmentation, word spelling and word reading. Results showed that skilled readers performed at ceiling on the three tasks, whereas less skilled readers had a better performance on spelling than on reading, and most of them reached segmentation criterion in the phonological awareness task. Performance on this task was Significantly correlated with word spelling, while no association was found between phoneme segmentation and word reading. The less skilled readers could spell many words they could not read, and children in both groups spelled most of the words in a conventional way.It is agreed that certain characteristics of Spanish phonetic structuresmall number of vowels, simple syllabic structureand the relative transparency of its orthography may account for the early development of phonemic segmentation skills and allow the mastery of sound-letter correspondence rules that is reflected in good spelling performance.

This paper examines the acoustic properties of Argentine Spanish fricatives and the spectral cues in recognition of these consonants. It was observed that [s] spectrally peaks around 5000 and 8000 Hx, [formula: see text] around 2500 and 5000 Hz, [f] around 1500 and 8500 Hz, [x] around 1000 and 4000 Hz and [ç] around 2000 and 4000 Hz. The perceptual importance of each of these spectral peaks was determined by filtering and synthesis experiments. With regard to the voice fricatives: [beta, ŏ, Y, Y, 3] the analysis showed periodic components with an F1 of similar frequency and a variable F2. Noise components with an F1 of similar frequency and a variable F2. Noise components were principally observed in [3]. Voiced fricatives proved to be shorter than voiceless ones. The analysis of fricatives in consonant-vowel syllables suggested that both the friction and vocalic portions may provide relevant acoustic cues. Tape-splicing experiments, designed to test this observation, showed that except for [x] and [Y], all Spanish fricatives were accurately identified by the friction portion alone. However, it was also observed that in transitionless syllables the vocalic portion affected the phonetic identification of the friction portion. This phenomenon pointed to the perceptual relevance of the transition in some combinations of fricatives and vowels.

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