Differentiating phonological memory and awareness of rhyme: Reading and vocabulary development in children

Abstract

A study of 4-and 5-year-old children investigated whether measures of phonological * Requests for reprints. 15-2Note. All ages are shown in years: months.Raven's Coloured Progressive Matrices. British Picture Vocabulary Scale.' British Abilities Scales.Pbonologicd memory. Two phonological memory tests were given to each child. The first test involved the repetition of non-words. A corpus of 40 non-words was used, consisting of 10 non-words at each of four syllable lengthstwo syllables, three syllables, four syllables and five syllables. The non-words for the three shortest lengths were taken from the corpus constructed for the purposes of our earlier longitudinal study, and 10 further five-syllable non-words were constructed by the same principles (see Gathercole & Baddeley, 1989, and Gathercole et d, 1991, for further details of these materials).Lengthier non-words were included in the present study in order to make the test sufficiently demanding for the older age group.

A structural analysis of working memory and related cognitive skills in young children

“…This position is consistent with evidence of a degree of independence in the links between the two phonological skills and reading ability (e.g., Hulme & Snowling, 1992;Wagner, Torgesen, & Rashotte, 1994). A third account is that verbal short-term memory and phonological awareness tasks are constrained by the adequacy of phonological processes, but that they also tap distinct mechanisms involving the phonological loop and metalinguistic analysis, respectively (e.g., Gathercole, Willis, & Baddeley, 1991;Hecht, Torgesen, Wagner, & Rashotte, 2001;Muter & Snowling, 1998).…”

Phonological similarity neighborhoods and children’s short-term memory: Typical development and dyslexia

“…Gathercole and colleagues have shown that individual differences in phonological short-term memory are related to vocabulary acquisition (Gathercole & Baddeley, 1989Gathercole, Hitch, Service, & Martin, 1997;Gathercole, Willis, & Baddeley, 1991;Gathercole, Willis, Emslie, & Baddeley, 1992) and have argued that phonological shortterm memory plays a critical role in the acquisition of new words. Phonological long-term memory representations for words, in turn, play an important role in determining the capacity of phonological short-term memory.…”

Rhyme and Alliteration Sensitivity and Relevant Experiences among Preschoolers from Diverse Backgrounds

“…The close relation that has been demonstrated between sensitivity to rhyme and alliteration and later reading (Bradley & Bryant, 1983;Bryant et al, 1989;Gathercole et al, 1991;MacLean et al, 1987) leads to the suggestion that one reason for the problems encountered by low-income youngsters in learning how to read (Dahl, 1989;Heath, 1983;Ninio, 1990;Purcell-Gates, 1989) is their relatively poor sensitivity to rhyme and alliteration. However, the role of rhyme sensitivity in early PJ^M FERNANDEZ-FEIN & BAKER reading has been challenged on the grounds that measures of rhyme are not strongly correlated with other measures of phonological awareness (Stanovich et al, 1984;Yopp, 1988) and are based on evidence that it is phonemic awareness rather than rhyme knowledge that predicts reading ability (Cardoso-Martins, i994> 1995;Lundberg, Frost, & Peterson, 1988).…”

“…Bradley and Bryant (1991) demonstrated that training in rhyme and alliteration beginning at ages 5 and 6 has positive effects on reading and spelling 3 years later. Gathercole, Willis, and Baddeley (1991) reported that preschoolers' performance on a rhyme-oddity detection task was significantly related to a multiple-choice measure of reading ability, even after controlling for age, phonological memory, and intelligence. Sensitivity to rhyme and alliteration also relates to literacy acquisition in languages other than English, such as Portuguese (Cardoso-Martins, 1995).…”