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Phonological representations and learning to read

Phonological representations and learning to read. Dr Julia Carroll Joanne Myers University of Warwick. Structure. Children with family history of dyslexia have similarities with speech impaired children Young children classify words according to articulatory features

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Phonological representations and learning to read

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  1. Phonological representations and learning to read Dr Julia Carroll Joanne Myers University of Warwick

  2. Structure • Children with family history of dyslexia have similarities with speech impaired children • Young children classify words according to articulatory features • What phonological difficulties are linked to later reading difficulties?

  3. The Phonological Representations Hypothesis • The reading and phonological awareness deficits in dyslexics are due to difficulties at the level of representations • Implications: • Children with dyslexia would have difficulties in a range of phonological tasks • These difficulties would be evident before reading tuition • Children with difficulties in phonological representations would have literacy difficulties

  4. Children with family history of dyslexia • Tunick & Pennington, 2002: Children with a family history of dyslexia are much more likely to have speech difficulties. • Pennington & Lefly, 2001: children who go on to have dyslexia show difficulties in speech perception and production tasks. • Family risk dyslexics show less accurate articulation in the pre-school years (Elbro et al, 1998, Scarborough, 1990).

  5. Children with speech difficulties • Many children with pre-school speech difficulties go on to develop below average reading skills (Bird, Bishop and Freeman, 1995) • Children with speech difficulties also show poorer letter knowledge and phonological awareness than control children (Nathan et al, 2004) • But… • Having speech difficulties is not a significant risk factor for reading difficulties in language impaired children (Bishop & Adams, 1990). • Children with poor speech and average language do not show significantly impaired reading development (Catts, 1991).

  6. 1. Children with family history of dyslexia have similarities with speech impaired children • 17 children with family history of dyslexia were compared to 17 children with speech difficulties and 17 normally developing control children. • Three-way matched on: • Age (4;0 years to 6;6 years) • Type of schooling • Gender • Assessed on: • Literacy • Letter knowledge and word reading • Phonological awareness • Syllable matching, Initial sound matching, rhyme matching • Phonological processing • Nonword repetition, articulation accuracy, mispronunciation detection • Phonological learning • Learning new words in a storybook situation

  7. Results: Composite scores

  8. Nonword repetition scores Articulation accuracy scores Control family risk speech Control family risk speech

  9. 1. Summary • Children with family history of dyslexia look similar to children with speech impairment • BUT • The relationship is not simple – children with speech impairments sometimes read well and children with dyslexia don’t have very poor speech

  10. 2. Articulatory features in representations • We don’t know much about typical children’s phonological representations • Seem to differ from adult’s representations • More ‘global’ or syllabic • Sensitive to similarities that adults don’t hear

  11. Sensitivity to non-phonemic information • Spelling • Confusions between similar words • Voicing errors – lig for lick • Especially in clusters or word finally • sbider for spider • Chain for train • Classification • More likely to classify words as similar if they share features • E.g. tug and mud

  12. 2. Young children classify words according to articulatory features • 125 children tested: • 59 from Reception (m= 4;11 years) • 66 from Nursery (m = 4;0 years) • Five measures used, four focused on: • Explicit classification: • Forced Choice (based on Storkel, 2002) • Sound Families • Implicit memory • Word Production • Memory confusions

  13. Hypotheses • Young children code words according to phonetic features – particularly manner of articulation • Therefore, they are more likely to say words are similar if they share manner of articulation. • They are likely to be confused by words sharing phonetic features in priming or memory tasks

  14. Classification – Forced Choice tug Same Phoneme Manner Place Different Onset + nucleus tug tough bus son mum mud young mum Rime tug hug Based on Storkel (2002)

  15. Forced choice n = 93 tug tough bus son mum mud tug hug young mum

  16. Memory confusions: Treiman & Breaux, 1982 “[bis]” • Children and adults taught three name – animal associations • Two words share a common phoneme • Two words share ‘global similarity’ • Which pair are most likely to be confused? • Adults – common phoneme pair • Children – globally similar pair “[bun]” “[diz]”

  17. Memory Confusions “[mern]” “[moab]” “[vit]” Mern and moab share one phoneme Mern and vit share place of articulation (broadly) 1 manner and phoneme 1 place and phoneme 1 manner and place Time A Time B = 24 hours later

  18. Memory Confusions At both time points, 63% of all errors were confusions At both times, distribution of the confusions differs from the random distribution: Time 1: χ2 (3) = 18.01, p < .01 Time 2: χ2 (3) = 81.22, p < .01

  19. 81.1% shared a vowel 62.2 % were rhyming words 16.8% shared vowel and manner in the coda Only 2% shared a vowel without shared manner in coda 4.0 % shared onset and vowel 11.6% shared onset with a different vowel Can you tell me words that sounds like… ? You can even make up words! Only CVCs were analysed Word Production (n = 79) “Bed” “Nut” “Shop” “That”

  20. Study 2: Summary • Children think of words that share manner of articulation as similar • They are particularly likely to notice this word-finally • This occurs across several tasks

  21. What we know and what we don’t • Children with weak phonology are at risk of reading difficulties • But some show good reading progress • How can we separate the ones who will progress well? • Language • Phonological representations • Input or output processes

  22. Our new research project • Select a large group of children at risk of phonological and literacy problems • Children at family risk of dyslexia • Children in regular speech therapy • Children with low nonword repetition scores • Assess different aspects of their phonology and language • Assess their reading after 6 months • Which aspects of phonology link to literacy?

  23. Tasks we will use • Phonology tasks • Nonword repetition • Output • Articulation (picture naming) • DEAP (Diagnostic Evaluation of Articulation and Phonology) • Input • Mispronunciation detection • Memory and representations • Forced choice classification • Phonological priming • Memory confusions • Language and literacy tasks • CELF pre-school sentence structure, expressive vocabulary, recalling sentences • Letter knowledge, single word reading and spelling

  24. How can you help? • Give details of the project to parents of suitable children: • Between 3;9 years and 6;0 years • Speech difficulties • No clear physical abnormalities (e.g. cleft lip & palate) • Regardless of their language skills • English as a first language • We can test children at home, at school or at the university • We can provide a brief report for parents • www.warwick.ac.uk/go/juliacarroll

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