Phonological Awareness Intervention with Preschool Children: Changes in Receptive Language Abilities Jodi Dyke, B.S. Tina K. Veale, Ph.D., CCC-SLP Eastern Illinois University What is Phonological Awareness?  Ability to reflect on and manipulate the sounds of an utterance separate from word meaning  Refers to an individual’s understanding that spoken language can be separated into strings of distinguishable words, and words into syllables and phonemes within syllables How Does Phonological Awareness Develop?  Typically emerges during preschool years  Begins with recognizing two-word rhymes and alliteration at 3 years of age  Progresses to blending phonemes to form words at 7 years of age Relationship of Phonological Awareness to Reading and Language Development  Building block of literacy  Predictor of later reading achievement  Positive impact on reading acquisition  Children with language disorders also at-risk for reading impairment  Reading impairment present in 50-90% of children with language disorders  Phonological awareness training promotes overall language development.  Specific language skills impacted are yet to be delineated. Research Questions  Do auditory comprehension skills of 3-year-old children with typical language development improve significantly following PA intervention?  Do auditory comprehension skills of 5-year old children with typical language development improve significantly following PA intervention?  Is there a significant difference in the impact of PA intervention of 3-year olds vs. 5-year olds? Subject Selection  12 typically developing children  Average IQ  Normal hearing and visual acuity  No identified language problems  Students of a central Illinois preschool  Experimental group  Four 3-year-olds  Four 5-year-olds  Control group  Two 3-year-olds  Two 5-year-olds Methodology  Pretest-posttest control group design  Each subject was administered the Test of Auditory Comprehension of Language – 3rd Edition (TACL-3).  Subtests included Vocabulary, Grammatical Morphemes, and Elaborated Phrases and Sentences  Testing conducted by licensed SLP  Researcher blind to subjects’ pretest results  Experimental group participated in ten-weeks of phonological awareness intervention.  Two children per group  20-minute intervals, twice per week  Activities included rhyme production and recognition, syllable segmenting and blending, and phoneme discrimination  Control group received no intervention. Conclusions  Experimental Group  N=8  Statistically significant gains were noted in overall auditory comprehension skills [t(7)=9.94; p<.001].  Control Group  N=4  No statistically significant gains were noted in overall auditory comprehension skills [t(3)=1.24; p=.30].  3-year-olds vs. 5-year-olds  5-year-olds made significantly greater gains in auditory comprehension skills than 3-year-olds [t(6)=2.93; p<.05]. Selected References Blachman, B. (1991). Early intervention for children’s reading problems: Clinical applications of the research in phonological awareness. Topics in Language Disorders, 12(1), Catts, H. (1991). Facilitating phonological awareness: Role of speech-language pathologists. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, 22, Hansen, D. (2003). Changes in language abilities of preschool children following phonological awareness training. Unpublished master’s thesis; Western Illinois University; Macomb, Illinois. Megli, M. (2004). Phonological awareness training: Augmenting speech and language. Unpublished master’s thesis; Western Illinois University; Macomb, Illinois. Stackhouse, J. (1997). Phonological awareness: Connecting speech and literacy. In B.W. Hodson & M.L. Edwards (Eds.), Perspectives in Applied Psychology, 29, Stark, R., Bernstein, L., Condion, R., Bender, M., Tallal, P., & Catts, H. (1984). Four year follow-up study of language impaired children. Annals of dyslexia, 34, Swank, L. & Catts, H. (1994). Phonological awareness and written decoding. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, 25, Data Analyses  Interval level measurements  TACL-3 standard scores analyzed to determine if significant differences existed between:  Control vs. experimental group  3-year-olds vs. 5-year-olds  Inferential statistics:  Two-tailed t-tests for paired samples  Two-tailed t-tests for independent samples  Descriptive statistics:  Mean pretest and posttest scores calculated Results TACL-3 PRE- AND POST-TEST RESULTS: 3-YEAR-OLDS Mean Scores Results TACL-3 PRE- AND POST-TEST RESULTS: 5-YEAR-OLDS Mean Scores