The role of phonological representation in decoding skills of young readers

Abstract

Phonological awareness reflects the strength of a child's ability to represent linguistic information cognitively at the phonological level. Although the role of phonological awareness in early reading decoding has been well documented, its relationship to other factors affecting reading decoding has yet to be fully examined. In this study, the relative strength of phonological representation was assessed through real word production, nonword repetition and phonological manipulation. The contribution of phonological representation to reading decoding was compared to the contribution of working memory, nonverbal intelligence and receptive vocabulary. Multiple regression analysis indicated that a complex phonological manipulation task, pig Latin, explained far more of the variance in reading decoding than any of the other predictor variables. Working memory, measured through a concurrent processing task, was not a significant predictor.