Metaphonological Abilities of Phonologically Disordered Children

Abstract

There is currently a great deal of interest in the underlying metaphonological abilities of children with phonological output impairment and their possible relationship with both the continuing speech problem and later literacy development. We present data from 61 children with phonological output problems and 59 normal speakers on a range of metaphonological, speech output, language and cognitive assessments. While supporting an overall group difference in metaphonological ability, the range of individual variation is highlighted. Some weak relationships were found between metaphonological skills and other language and cognitive performance, but not between metaphonological ability and severity of speech performance. The accepted developmental order of phonological awareness tasks was not entirely supported; rather, subgroups of children were found who were showing quite different orders of difficulty. A distinction between segmentation and rhyming skills was confirmed.