TY - JOUR A1 - Höse, Anna A1 - Wyschkon, Anne A1 - Moraske, Svenja A1 - Eggeling, Marie A1 - Quandte, Sabine A1 - Kohn, Juliane A1 - Poltz, Nadine A1 - von Aster, Michael G. A1 - Esser, Günter T1 - Prevention of dyslexia short-term and intermediate effects of promoting phonological awareness and letter-sound correspondence with at-risk preschool children JF - Zeitschrift für Kinder- und Jugendpsychiatrie und Psychotherapie N2 - Objective: This study assesses the short-term and intermediate effects of preschool training stimulating phonological awareness and letter-sound correspondence for children at risk of developing dyslexia. Moreover, we examined whether training reduced the frequency of subsequent dyslexic problems. Method: 25 children at risk of developing dyslexia were trained with Horen, Lauschen, Lernen 1 und 2 (Kuspert & Schneider, 2008; Plume & Schneider, 2004) by their kindergarten teachers and were compared with 60 untrained at-risk children. Results:The training revealed a significant short-term effect: The phonological awareness of trained at-risk children increased significantly over that of untrained at-risk children. However, there were no differences in phonological awareness, spelling, and reading ability between the first-graders in the training and control group. Furthermore, reading problems were reduced in the training group. Conclusions: In the future, phonological awareness as well as additional predictors should be included when identifying children vulnerable to developing dyslexia. Moreover, in order to prevent dyslexia, additional prerequisite deficits need to be identified, alleviated, and their effects evaluated. KW - developmental dyslexia KW - phonological awareness KW - prevention KW - risk KW - specific developmental disorder Y1 - 2016 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1024/1422-4917/a000456 SN - 1422-4917 SN - 1664-2880 VL - 44 SP - 377 EP - 391 PB - Hogrefe CY - Bern ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Noiray, Aude A1 - Popescu, Anisia A1 - Killmer, Helene A1 - Rubertus, Elina A1 - Krüger, Stella A1 - Hintermeier, Lisa T1 - Spoken Language Development and the Challenge of Skill Integration JF - Frontiers in Psychology N2 - The development of phonological awareness, the knowledge of the structural combinatoriality of a language, has been widely investigated in relation to reading (dis)ability across languages. However, the extent to which knowledge of phonemic units may interact with spoken language organization in (transparent) alphabetical languages has hardly been investigated. The present study examined whether phonemic awareness correlates with coarticulation degree, commonly used as a metric for estimating the size of children’s production units. A speech production task was designed to test for developmental differences in intra-syllabic coarticulation degree in 41 German children from 4 to 7 years of age. The technique of ultrasound imaging allowed for comparing the articulatory foundations of children’s coarticulatory patterns. Four behavioral tasks assessing various levels of phonological awareness from large to small units and expressive vocabulary were also administered. Generalized additive modeling revealed strong interactions between children’s vocabulary and phonological awareness with coarticulatory patterns. Greater knowledge of sub-lexical units was associated with lower intra-syllabic coarticulation degree and greater differentiation of articulatory gestures for individual segments. This interaction was mostly nonlinear: an increase in children’s phonological proficiency was not systematically associated with an equivalent change in coarticulation degree. Similar findings were drawn between vocabulary and coarticulatory patterns. Overall, results suggest that the process of developing spoken language fluency involves dynamical interactions between cognitive and speech motor domains. Arguments for an integrated-interactive approach to skill development are discussed. KW - language acquisition KW - coarticulation KW - speech motor control KW - phonological awareness KW - vocabulary KW - speech production Y1 - 2019 U6 - https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02777 SN - 1664-1078 VL - 10 PB - Frontiers Research Foundation CY - Lausanne ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Tsegaye, Mulugeta Tarekegne A1 - De Bleser, Ria A1 - Iribarren, Carolina T1 - The effect of literacy on oral language processing implications for aphasia tests JF - Clinical linguistics & phonetics N2 - Most studies investigating the impact of literacy on oral language processing have shown that literacy provides phonological awareness skills in the processing of oral language. The implications of these results on aphasia tests could be significant and pose questions on the adequacy of such tools for testing non-literate individuals. Aiming at examining the impact of literacy on oral language processing and its implication on aphasia tests, this study tested 12 non-literate and 12 literate individuals with a modified Amharic version of the Bilingual Aphasia Test (Paradis and Amberber, 1991, Bilingual Aphasia Test. Amharic version. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.). The problems of phonological awareness skills in oral language processing in non-literates are substantiated. In addition, compared with literate participants, non-literate individuals demonstrated difficulties in the word/sentence-picture matching tasks. This study has also revealed that the Amharic version of the Bilingual Aphasia Test may be viable for testing Amharic-speaking non-literate individuals with aphasia when modifications are incorporated. KW - aphasia KW - Bilingual Aphasia Test KW - literacy KW - Amharic KW - phonological awareness KW - word/sentence-picture matching Y1 - 2011 U6 - https://doi.org/10.3109/02699206.2011.567348 SN - 0269-9206 VL - 25 IS - 6-7 SP - 628 EP - 639 PB - Taylor & Francis Group CY - London ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Kempert, Sebastian Benjamin A1 - Götz, Regina A1 - Blatter, Kristine A1 - Tibken, Catharina A1 - Artelt, Cordula A1 - Schneider, Wolfgang A1 - Stanat, Petra T1 - Training Early Literacy Related Skills BT - To Which Degree Does a Musical Training Contribute to Phonological Awareness Development? JF - Frontiers in psychology N2 - Well-developed phonological awareness skills are a core prerequisite for early literacy development. Although effective phonological awareness training programs exist, children at risk often do not reach similar levels of phonological awareness after the intervention as children with normally developed skills. Based on theoretical considerations and first promising results the present study explores effects of an early musical training in combination with a conventional phonological training in children with weak phonological awareness skills. Using a quasi-experimental pretest-posttest control group design and measurements across a period of 2 years, we tested the effects of two interventions: a consecutive combination of a musical and a phonological training and a phonological training alone. The design made it possible to disentangle effects of the musical training alone as well the effects of its combination with the phonological training. The outcome measures of these groups were compared with the control group with multivariate analyses, controlling for a number of background variables. The sample included N = 424 German-speaking children aged 4–5 years at the beginning of the study. We found a positive relationship between musical abilities and phonological awareness. Yet, whereas the well-established phonological training produced the expected effects, adding a musical training did not contribute significantly to phonological awareness development. Training effects were partly dependent on the initial level of phonological awareness. Possible reasons for the lack of training effects in the musical part of the combination condition as well as practical implications for early literacy education are discussed. KW - phonological awareness KW - musical training KW - phonological training KW - preschool children KW - early literacy Y1 - 2016 U6 - https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01803 SN - 1664-1078 VL - 7 PB - Frontiers Research Foundation CY - Lausanne ER -