Phonological awareness development in children with and without spoken language difficulties: A 12-month longitudinal study of German-speaking preschool children

摘要

Purpose: There is strong empirical evidence that English-speaking children withudspoken language difficulties (SLD) often have phonological awareness (PA) deficits. The aimudof this study was to explore longitudinally if this is also true of preschool children speakingudGerman, a language that makes extensive use of derivational morphemes which may impactudon the acquisition of different PA levels.ududMethod: Thirty four-year-old children with SLD were assessed on eleven PA subtestsudat three points over a 12-month period and compared to 97 four-year-old typically developingud(TD) children.ududResult: The TD-group had a mean percentage correct of over 50% for the majority ofudtasks (including phoneme tasks) and their PA skills developed significantly over time. Inudcontrast, the SLD-group improved their PA performance over time on syllable and rhyme butudnot on phoneme level tasks. Group comparisons revealed that children with SLD had weakerudPA skills, in particular on phoneme level tasks.ududConclusion: The study contributes a longitudinal perspective on PA developmentudbefore school entry. In line with their English-speaking peers, German-speaking childrenudwith SLD showed poorer PA skills than TD peers, indicating that the relationship betweenudSLD and PA is similar across these two related but different languages.