Lexical Properties, Vocabulary, and Phonological Awareness

1
Lexical Properties, Vocabulary, and
Phonological Awareness Kimberly McDowell,
Wichita State University Robyn Ziolkowski, The
Ohio State University
Methods
Results
Discussion
Introduction

• The National Reading Panel (2000) identified five
  essential components for successful reading
  acquisition.
• Extant research, however, indicates that these
  skills may not be discrete and separable.
• Efforts to identify the causes of the development
  of phonological awareness have not yielded
  consistent findings (e.g., Raz Bryant, 1990
  Senechal Lefevre, 2002).
• One possible origin for the development of
  phonological awareness may be the development of
  vocabulary.
• Current research indicates that phonological
  awareness and oral language are significantly
  correlated in the preschool period (e.g., Lonigan
  et al., 1998), that there are significant
  concurrent and longitudinal associations between
  vocabulary and phonological awareness (e.g.,
  Cooper et al., 2002), and some data suggest that
  vocabulary is predictive of growth in
  phonological awareness (Lonigan, 2006).
• The Lexical Restructuring Model (LRM Metsala
  Walley, 1998) indicates that representations of
  spoken words become increasingly segmental with
  spoken vocabulary growth and this change makes
  possible explicit access to phonemic units.
• Variations across children in lexical growth may
  contribute to individual differences in
  phonological awareness.
• Although typically developing children appear to
  restructure their lexicons from whole word
  representations to phonemic level
  representations, it is unclear whether speech
  sound accuracy affects this ability. It is also
  unclear whether word properties of phonotactic
  probability and neighborhood density affect the
  value of speech sound accuracy in predicting
  phonological awareness.
• Specific Aims were to determine
• The nature of the relation between vocabulary
  and phonological awareness in children with and
  without functional phonological delays.
• Whether word properties impact the nature of
  word learning within young children.

Participants included 25 typically developing
children and 25 children with functional
phonological delays. Children were between the
ages of 50 and 65. After informed consent,
participants completed inclusionary assessments.
Those who met the inclusionary criteria then
completed study-specific assessments (Table
1). After completing the
assessments, students participated in an
intervention program targeting vocabulary and
phonological awareness. The two groups (typical
vs. those with functional phonological delays)
received intervention independent from each
other. Each group (n5 students, 1 teacher) met
twice weekly for 11 weeks with each session
lasting 30 minutes. Stimuli Words were targeted
that were balanced for density and probability.
There were 5 common-sparse, 5 common-dense, 5
rare-sparse, and 5 rare-dense (see handout). The
order of presentation was counterbalanced across
groups. Stimuli were housed within intervention
storybooks. Each story book contained 2 of the
target words, with a minimum of 4 exposures per
word.
Table 2 illustrates the descriptive statistics by
group. To determine the nature of the
relation between vocabulary and phonological
awareness in young children with functional
phonological delays, multiple regression analyses
were completed. Results indicated that both
speech sound accuracy and vocabulary predict
phonological awareness in this group of children.
To examine group differences in word
learning, a 2 (group) x 2 (phonotactic
probability) x 2 (density) repeated measures
ANOVA was completed using data from the 20
stimuli words. There were significant main
effects for Group Group F (1,48) 12.98
plt.001 Typical gt Functional Phonological
Delay Each group was then looked at individually.
For the typically developing group, there was a
significant main effect for probability F (1,
24) 4.36, plt.01 with CommongtRare. For children
with functional phonological delays, there were
significant main effects for probability and
density F (1, 24) 8.92, plt.01 (RaregtCommon)
and F (1, 24) 5.43, plt.01 (DensegtSparse).
This study lends support to the notion that
vocabulary and phonological awareness are related
and that speech sound accuracy predicts
phonological awareness skills. It lends further
support to extant research regarding word
properties of phonotactic probability and
neighborhood density. During the word-learning
intervention, group differences emerged.
Typically developing children learned words with
common/dense properties over words with
rare/sparse properties. In contrast, participants
with functional phonological delays learned words
with rare/sparse properties over words with
common/dense properties. Extant research has
indicated that children with phonological delays
learn equivalent number of words as typically
developing peers but different types of words.
They may learn words with rare/sparse properties
because of weak underlying phonological
representations that make it difficult to
differentiate common sound sequences (e.g.,
Storkel 2001, 2004). Future research could focus
on interventions that target facilitation of word
learning with words that have common sound
sequences and within dense neighborhoods.
Acknowledgement Th
is project was possible due to a grant from the
American Speech Language Hearing Foundation.