Teaching prereading skills with a talking computer

Teaching prereading skills with a talking computer Let ter-sound knowledge and print f eedback facilitate nonreaders "phonological awareness training

R O D E R I C K W. B A R R O N , J O N A T H A N O. G O L D E N , D I A N N E M. S E L D O N , C A R O L F. T A I T , H A R V E Y H. C. M A R M U R E K 1 and L E O N A R D P. H A I N E S 2

i University ofGuelph; 2 University of Saskatchewan

ABSTRACT: The phonological awareness skills of nonreaders were trained using an oddity task (e.g., which word in the series 'sit', 'fit', 'cat' has the odd sound in its middle position). As training progressed, the basis of the oddity decision was shifted from rhyming, to consonant onsets, to consonant and vowel phonemes. The words were spoken by a DECtalk speech synthesizer. One of the experimental groups was given printed as well as computer generated speech feedback while the other was given just computer speech feedback. The alternative training control group based their oddity decisions on meaning rather than sound and was also given just computer speech feedback. Only children with low letter-sound knowledge showed pre-test to post-test gains in performance on a rhyming task compared to the control group, and these gains were not influenced by print feedback. In contrast, only children with high letter-sound knowledge, who were given print feedback during learning, showed pre-test to post-test gains in performance on a phoneme deletion task compared to the control group. These results indicate that a combination of high letter-sound knowledge and print feedback facilitates awareness of phonemes among children who cannot yet read or spell, but awareness of rimes is not facilitated by either high letter-sound knowledge or print feedback. Although consistent with bi-directional, causal models of phonological awareness and literacy, these results indicate that the definition of literacy employed by such models may require expansion. This new definition should include proto-literacy -- knowledge of letter-sound and other print-sound relationships that are learned before becoming literate and that may influence the acquisition of awareness of some sub-syllabic units of speech.

KEY WORDS: Pre-readers, Phonemic awareness training, Protoqiteracy (letter-sound, print- sound relationship)

ABBREVIATIONS: WPPSI -- Wechsler preschool and primary scale of intelligence; WRAT-R -- Wide range achievement test, revised

INTRODUCTION

A l t h o u g h two d e c a d e s o f r e sea rch have c lear ly shown that awareness of the p h o n o l o g i c a l segments mak ing up s p o k e n w o r d s is causa l ly c o n n e c t e d to lea rn ing to r ead and spel l (e.g., S tanovich 1986; W a g n e r & T o r g e s e n 1987), the re is still c o n s i d e r a b l e con t rove r sy conce rn ing the d i rec t ion of that causal i ty. O n one side, Ber te l son , M o r a i s and their co l leagues have a rgued that the abi l i ty to segment s p o k e n words into p h o n e m e s is a p r o d u c t of

Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal 4: 179--204, 1992, © 1992 KIuwerAcademic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands,

180 R.W. BARRON ET AL.

having already learned to read and spell -- the direction of causality goes from literacy to phonological awareness. The primary evidence for their position comes from studies of adult illiterates who perform more poorly than ex-illiterates oll tasks in which they are required to add, delete, or reverse single phonemes in words (e.g., Bertelson & deGelder 1989; MorNs, Alegria & Content 1987; Morais, Bertelson, Cary & Alegria 1986; Morais, Cary, Alegria & Bertelson 1979).

On the other side of the controversy, Bradley, Bryant and their colleagues have argued that phonological awareness is a precursor to learning to read and spell -- the direction of causality goes from phonological awareness to literacy. Some of their primary evidence comes from longitudinal studies which show that preschoolers' level of skill in rhyme, alliteration, and phoneme detection tasks predict their level of performance in reading and spelling (e.g., Bradley & Bryant 1983, 1985; Bryant, Bradley, MacLean & Crossland 1989; Bryant, MacLean, Bradley & Crossland 1990; MacLean, Bryant & Bradley 1987).

One reason this controversy is difficult to resolve is that phonological awareness is a heterogeneous skill involving several types of linguistic units. These units consist of syllables, onsets, rimes, and phonemes and recent evidence indicates that they are organized hierarchically with the syllable (e.g., 'pot', 'spot') at the top level and the phoneme ( e . g . / s / , / p / , / o / , / t / ) at the bottom level (see Treiman, in press, for a review). Onsets, which consist of a consonant or consonant cluster (e.g., /s/, /st/), have an intermediate position in the hierarchy along with rimes, which consist of a vowel plus any following consonants (e.g.,/ot/).

Since literacy is usually acquired at about the same time as phonological awareness, it is possible that these different levels of spoken language units may influence, and be influenced by, different levels of written language units. Furthermore, this interactive pattern of influence may change during the course of the acquisition of these skills. As a result, a uni-directional causal model may be less tenable than a more complex, bi-directional model in which the direction of causation varies with the level of orthographic and phonological unit (e.g., Bertelson & deGelder 1989; Goswami & Bryant 1990; MorNs et al. 1987; Perfetti, Beck, Bell & Hughes 1987).

An experiment by Kirtley, Bryant, MacLean & Bradley, (1987) provides evidence which is consistent with such an interactive model of the relationship between phonological awareness and literacy. Using an oddity task, they found that nonreaders could identify a word containing an odd single consonant above chance when the consonant was an onset (e.g., / p / i n 'man', 'mint', 'peck', 'mug'). Their performance was at chance, however, when they were required to identify the word containing the odd consonant when the consonant was a phoneme embedded in the rime (e.g. , / t / in 'pin', 'gun', 'hat', 'men'). In contrast, children who could read were above chance in the oddity task when the consonant was a phoneme as well as when it was an onset.

These results suggest that awareness of individual phonemes requires

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literacy whereas awareness of onsets does not. Other evidence, taken from studies employing adult illiterates as well as pre-reading children, indicates that awareness of rimes also does not require literacy (e.g., Bertelson & deGelder 1989; Bertelson, deGelder, Tfouni & MorNs 1989; Bryant et al. 1987; MacLean et al. 1989).

Experiments such as Kirtley et al. (1989) are useful, as are longitudinal correlation studies and studies of illiterates, in specifying causal connections between phonological awareness and literacy. Bradley & Bryant (1983, 1985), however, have argued that training studies can provide particularly persuasive evidence on this issue because factors which may influence the acquisition of phonological awareness skill can be manipulated directly as independent variables in controlled settings. Their landmark training experiment is described below.

The children in the Bradley & Bryant (1983, 1985) study (mean age 6 yrs, 1 month) were divided into four groups matched in vocabulary and performance on rhyme and alliteration oddity tasks. Subjects in the sound categorization experimental group (group I: N = 13) learned to classify pictures of objects based upon initial, middle and final sounds that the picture names had in common and that distinguished them (e.g., find the pictures that start with/b/ ; which pictures do not start with/b/?). The number of sounds was gradually increased and spoken words, as well as oddity rhyme and alliteration tasks, were introduced as training progressed.

Subjects in the second experimental group (Group II: N ~ 13) received the same initial training, but new sounds were introduced in association with their corresponding letters beginning after approximately one-half of the sessions had been completed. The children were also encouraged to con- struct words from letters and orthographic patterns shared by several words were pointed out. The children in the alternative training control group (Group III: N -- 26) were presented with the same words as the experimental group, but they based their same and different classifications upon semantic categories of varying sizes (e.g., living things, things inside, people, animals) rather than on sound. The children in the no training control group (Group IV: N - - 1 3 ) were not given any training. The training consisted of 40 individual sessions spread over two years.

Bradley & Bryant (1983, 1985) found that the group given training in both sound categorization and letter-sound relationships (Group II) obtained significantly higher scores than either of the control groups on measures of reading and spelling. Although the group given only sound categorization training (Group I) was consistently superior to the control conditions, the differences were not statistically significant. Finally, the four groups did not differ on a measure of arithmetic which was designed to assess their academic progress in an area that did not specifically involve literacy.

Bradley & Bryant (1983, 1985) interpreted their results as evidence for a causal connection going from phonological awareness to literacy because their sound categorization training produced increases that were specific to

182 R .W. BARRON ET AL.

reading and spelling and were greater than the closely matched alternative training control condition. Bertelson, Morais, Alegria & Content (1985) have pointed out, however, that Bradley & Bryant's (1983, 1985) training evidence is also consistent with causation going from literacy to phonological awareness because the only experimental group that differed from the control had received training in letter-sound associations, word construction, and orthographic pattern similarity.

There are several other problems in interpreting Bradley & Bryant's (1983, 1985) results with regard to the issue of the causal relationships between phonological awareness and literacy. First, phonological awareness was only measured before and not after training, therefore it is not possible to determine how phonological awareness itself was influenced by the training. Second, the method of instruction given to Group II was very similar to that employed in the early stages of teaching phonics to children (Bradley 1980). As a result, the children in Group II may have produced higher reading and spelling scores than the controls simply because they were given explicit instruction in those skills. Third, the long training period introduces the possibility that group differences may have been influenced by the effects of formal and informal reading instruction provided inside and outside of school.

Finally, the four groups were six years old when they started the training and, even though they may not have been able to read any words aloud or spell them to dictation, they may have had a great deal of knowledge about print and its relationship to sound. Possession of such knowledge is consistent with the view that literacy is not just a product of formal instruction; instead, it emerges gradually during the preschool years and is influenced by exposure to print and informal instruction.

Adams (1990) estimates that many middle class children in North America have had several thousand hours of exposure to printed words and their corresponding phonological representations before they are formally taught reading and spelling. These children often learn the associations between letters and their names (D -- pronounced 'dee') and letters and their sounds (D - - / d / p r o n o u n c e d 'duh') before they can read or spell any words. This initial literacy or proto-literacy may influence their acquisition of phonological awareness and, ultimately, reading and spelling (Barton 1986, 1991; Ehri 1983, 1984). Stuart & Coltheart (1988) and Vellutino & Scanton (1987), for example, have reported correlations between letter-sound knowledge and measures of phonological awareness ranging between 0.60 and 0.80 for five year-old children having only a few months of formal schooling. These correlational results suggest the possibility of considerable variation in the letter-sound knowledge of the children involved in the Bradley & Bryant (1983, 1985) trailfing experiment. What remains unknown is if such initial differences in letter-sound knowledge or explicit instruction in letter-sound knowledge (i.e., Group II) may have influenced phonological awareness training.


There is, however, evidence from several training studies indicating that letter-sound measures of proto-literate knowledge influence the acquisition of phonological awareness among children who have not yet learned to read or spell ~ a r r o n 1991). Ehri & Wilce (1985) demonstrated that nonreaders with high letter-sound knowledge can learn and remember an association between a spoken word (e.g., 'scissors') and a sequence of letters (e.g., szrs) whose associated sounds resemble the word's pronunciation when blended. Bryne & Fielding-Barnsley (1989, 1990) taught nonreaders (three to five years old) to read the words mat and sat. They showed that both phoneme segmentation training and training in letter-sound association knowledge were necessary for these children to transfer their reading knowledge to the task of deciding that 'mow' rather than 'sow' was the correct pronunciation of m O W .

The effects of letter-sound training on phonological awareness were explored more directly by Hohn & Ehri (1983) and Ball & Blachman (!991). Hohn & Ehri (1983) taught non-readers the names and sounds of eight letters. Subsequently, one group was given phonological awareness training in which they segmented words and nonwords by selecting the letter token that corresponded to each phoneme making up the items. A second group used tokens that did not have letters printed on them and were not visually distinctive. Post-test performance indicated that the letter trained group was superior to the no letter group on a segmentation task employing the phonemes used during training. Both of the experimental groups were better than a control group that was not given training. Ball & Blachman (1991) also found that the combination of segmentation and letter-sound training produced greater gains in nonreaders' phoneme segmentation performance than a control group that did not receive training. Letter-name and letter-sound training alone, however, failed to produce gains in phoneme segmentation compared to the control.

Taken together, the results of these studies suggest that nonreaders' are more likely to acquire phonological awareness skills when phoneme segmentation training is coupled with letter-sound knowledge training. In contrast to this conclusion, however, both Cunningham (1990) and Lundberg, Frost & Petersen (t988) have shown that the phonological awareness skills of nonreaders can be improved without any apparent assistance from letter- sound training. Cunningham (1990) and Lundberg et al.'s (1988) conclusions are further strengthened by the fact that their control groups were given alternative training (higher order language, social skills) rather than no training at all. Both of these studies are limited, however, because they do not provide sufficient information about the influence of the children's level of pre-experimental letter-sound knowledge upon the phonological awareness training conducted during the experiments.

In Cunningham's (1990) study, Kindergarten children were matched on a measure of prereading skill which included tests of letter-name and letter- sound knowledge. Cunningham (1990), however, did not vary letter-name or


letter-sound knowledge systematically in assigning children to experimental and control groups or explicitly select children who were clearly nonreaders. It is difficult, therefore, to determine if proto-literacy or literacy knowledge contributed to training phonological awareness skill.

Lundberg et al. (1988) reported that the children in their experiment had relatively low letter-name knowledge (about four letter-names at the beginning of training and none at the end). Although not reported, the level of letter-sound knowledge is likely to have been even lower than the letter-name knowledge. Lundberg et al.'s (1988) study was conducted in Denmark, however, where schooling begins at age seven. As a result, the children were at least one year older than the children who participated in the British and North American studies described above. It is possible, therefore, that this extra year of general language experience, which is likely to have included some informal contact with written language, may have contributed to the success of Lundberg et al.'s (1988) training results.

These contradictory findings indicate that additional research is needed to clarify the role that letter-sound measures of proto-literate knowledge may play in the acquisition of phonological awareness skills. The purpose of the present study is to explore the influence of proto-literacy upon the training of phonological awareness skills and, thereby, potentially contribute to trader- standing the causal relationships between phonological awareness and literacy. Phonological awareness skill will be trained within the context of an oddity task (Bradley & Bryant 1983, 1985) in which the size of the odd linguistic unit will be progressively changed from a rime to an onset to a phoneme. Proto-literate knowledge will be investigated by selecting children for training who cannot yet read and spell, but who differ in letter-sound knowledge, and by manipulating the availability of print feedback during training. Training effects will be evaluated with reference to an alternative training control group using a pre-test, training, post-test design.

Based on the previous discussion of the relationships between phonological awareness and literacy, we predicted that phonological awareness training would be more beneficial for nonreaders with high than low letter- sound knowledge. We also predicted that providing feedback about the spelling of words used in phonological awareness training would facilitate learning, particularly for nonreaders with high letter-sound knowledge. Finally, the effects of high letter-sound knowledge should be stronger in tasks, such as phoneme deletion, that require explicit identification and manipulation of individual phonemes than in tasks, such as oddity rhyme recognition, which do not.

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METHOD

Subjects Sixty-six Kindergarten children participated in the training study. They were chosen from a larger group of children (N = 165) based upon their reading, spelling, arithmetic, IQ and letter-sound knowledge. The average age of the children (36 boys, 30 girls) was five years, seven months and they were recruited from schools located in urban and semi-rural areas of Southern Ontario. English was the first language for all of the children and they were pre-tested, trained, and post-tested during the period January through June, 1989.

Group classification measures The experiment consisted of three training groups, one of which was an alternative treatment control group (N----22 per group). The first experimental training group was referred to as the Speech and Print Feedback group, the second experimental training group was referred to as the Speech Only Feedback group, and the alternative training control group was referred to as the Semantic Category Control group. Subjects were assigned to the training groups on a random basis, but under the constraints imposed by matching the groups on the measures described below. In addition, one half of the children within each group had high letter-sound knowledge (High Letter-Sound Group) and the other half had low letter-sound knowledge (Low Letter-Sound Group). There were not any significant age differences [Training F(2,60) ----- 1.25, p > 0.10; Letter-Sound F(1,60) < 1; Training x Letter-Sound F(2,60) < 1] or sex differences [Training F(2,60) < 1, Letter-Sound F(1,60) < 1, Training X Letter-Sound F(2,60) < 1] across the six groups (see Table 1).

Nonword reading. In order to insure that all of the children were unable to read, we attempted to identify any children who could decode single syllable nonwords as this skill is strongly related to subsequent success in learning to read (e.g., Olson et al. 1990; Perfetti 1985; Stanovich 1986). We used the Word Attack subtest of the Woodcock Reading Mastery Test -- Revised (Woodcock 1987) as our measure of nonword reading and selected the children so that the average level of nonword decoding was substantially below one nonword (M = 0.02). Table 1 shows that the six groups did not differ, but statistical analyses were not conducted on the scores as they were virtually all zeros and there was no variance in several of the groups.

Word reading. We used two standardized measures of word recognition and one of spelling in order to obtain a wide sampling of items with which to examine whole word literacy among the children. The children were required to read aloud individual words such as red, is, see, you, look, and, mother,

186 R . W . B A R R O N ET AL.

Table 1. Means on the pre-test measures*

Speech and print Speech only Semantic category feedback feedback control

H L H L H L

Age (months) 67.5 68.1 69.0 68.8 67.1 66.3 (3.2) (4.4) (2.1) (4.2) (3.5) (7.9)

IO (WPSSI) 110.2 108.5 110.6 106.2 110.8 110.6 (9.4) (12.4) (12.5) (6.5) (5.6) (5.5)

Woodcock-word attack 0.0 0.0 0.1 0.0 0.0 0.0

(0.0) (0.0) (0.3) (0.0) (0.0) (0.0)

Woodcock-word recognition 1.5 0.2 1.5 1.0 1.0 0.6

(1.8) (0.6) (1.8) (2.4) (1.2) (1.1)

Slosson-oral reading 0.5 0.3 0.4 0.2 0.3 0.1

(1.0) (0.9) (0.7) (0.6) (0.9) (0.3)

WRAT-R spelling 18.0 17.8 18.1 !7.7 17,5 18.7 (2.9) (2.9) (2.3) (3.8) (3.2) (2.6)

WRAT-R arithmetic t2.1 11.5 1 t .5 12.0 11.1 11.8 (1.5) (1.4) (1.9) (1.9) (0.8) (2.1)

Memory task (recall max = 90) 62.0 58.1 63.6 63.4 65.6 63.1

(10.7) (11.6) (13.2) (12.0) (13.8) (12.5)

Letter-sound naming (max = 25) 14.7 10.9 17.6 7.7 16.8 9.2

(5.1) (7.2) (3.7) (5.8) (5.2) (3.7)

Letter-sound recognition (max = 33) 18.3 14.7 22.6 t5.1 19.0 15.1

(10.3) (7.3) (4.8) (7.8) (8.8) (5.9)

Letter naming (max = 26) 22.7 20.6 24.9 19.3 25.4 18.8

(6.4) (5.8) (1.6) (7.5) (5.8) (4.0)

H -- High letter-sound group; L -- Low letter-sound group. * Standard deviations in parentheses.

to, up, little, cat, here, big in the W o r d Identif icat ion subtest of the W o o d - cock Reading Mas te ry Tests-Revised, F o r m G ( W o o d c o c k 1987) and the Slosson Ora l Reading Test (Slosson 1963). The chi ldren could read less than one word on either test ( W o o d c o c k M = 0.97; Slosson M = 0.30). Tab le 1 shows that the six groups did not differ on the W o o d c o c k [Training F(2 ,60)

LETTER-SOUND 187

< 1; Letter-Sound F(1,60) = 3.23, p > 0.05; Training X Letter-Sound F(2,60) < 1] or the Slosson [Training F(2,60) < 1; Letter-Sound F(1,60) = 1.23,p > 0.10; Training X Letter-Sound F(2,60) < 1].

Spelling. We used the spelling subtest of the Wide Range Achievement Test - - Revised (WRAT-R, level 1; Jastak & Wilkinson, 1984) in which children were required to spell words to dictation including go, in, and, cat, boy. The maximum raw score on this test is 65, but children are given 20 of the score points for correctly copying letter-like forms and writing out their name; one point was given for each correctly spelled word. The average score was below 20 (M-- 17.96) and Table 1 shows that the six groups did not differ [Training F(2,60) < 1; Letter-Sound F(1,60); Training X Letter-Sound F(2,60) < 1].

Intelligence. The vocabulary, information, geometric design and block design subtests of the Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence (WPPSI, Wechsler 1967) were used to estimate the children's full scale intelligence test score. These four subtest correlate r = 0.91 with the full scale version of the test (Silverstein 1970). The children's mean estimated full scale score was 109.5 and Table 1 shows that six groups did not differ [Training F(2,60) < 1; Letter-Sound F(1,60) < 1; Training X Letter-Sound F(2,60) < 1].

Arithmetic. The arithmetic subtest of the WRAT-R (level 1) was used to assess the children's academic achievement in an area other than reading. This test evaluates children's numerical and arithmetic knowledge using an oral and written format. The oral part of the test contains counting, numerical identification, addition and subtraction problems. The remainder of the test is written and contains arithmetic computation problems. The mean raw score was 11.7 and Table t shows that the six groups did not differ [Training F(2,60) < 1, Letter-Sound F(1,60) < 1, Training X Letter- Sound F(2,60) < 1].

Letter-sound knowledge. We used two measures of letter-sound knowledge. In the letter-sound naming task, the subjects were shown one of three random orders of the 26 letters of the alphabet and required to produce the sound associated with each letter. In the case of consonants, either of the following sounds were a c c e p t a b l e : / s / o r / k / f o r C , / j / o r / g / f o r G. Either long (i.e., letter-name) or short vowel sounds were scored as correct. Some children responded with words that started with the appropriate vowel or consonant and these were also scored as correct. The mean raw score was 12.8 correct out of 26 (see Table 1). The significant Letter-Sound main effect F(1,60) -- 16.06, p < 0.001) indicates that groups classified as having high letter-sound knowledge had higher letter-sound naming scores (M = 16.4) than those classified as having low letter-sound knowledge [(M ----- 9.3). The


Training main effect F(2,60) < 1 and the Training X Letter-Sound interaction F(2,60) = 1.90, p < 0.10 were not significant.

We also employed a letter-sound recognition task in which subjects saw an uppercase letter (e.g., B) at the same time as they heard three words (e.g., 'did', 'big', 'get'). They were required to repeat the words aloud and then to say which one of the words (i.e., 'big') contained a sound in the first position (i.e., /b/) that was associated with the visually displayed letter. Unlike a naming task, this task allowed us to present both the long and short vowel sounds and the alternative sounds associated with the consonants C and G. The target word containing the correct letter-sound and the two foil words were presented on a portable tape recorder. Consonant targets were presented with consonant foils and vowel targets were presented with vowel foils. The subjects were given one of three randomized versions of the task and the position of the target word appeared equally often in the first, middle and last position in the series. The subjects were given two practice trials with feedback, but were not given feedback on the accuracy of their responses in the experimental trials.

The mean raw" score was 17.5 correct out of 33 (see Table 1). The significant Letter-Sound main effect F(1,60) = 7.00, p < 0.025) indicates that groups classified as having high letter-sound knowledge had higher letter- sound recognition scores (M -- 20.0) than those classified as having low letter-sound knowledge [(M = 15.0). The Training main effect F(2,60) < 1 and the Training × Letter-Sound interaction F(2,60) < 1 were not significant.

Letter name knowledge. Finally, we also measured the children's letter name knowledge in a production task in which they were required to point to each of the 26 letters of the alphabet printed in uppercase and say its name aloud. Three different random orders were used. Table 1 shows that the results tended to parallel those obtained for letter-sound knowledge, but that the performance was above seventy percent for all of the groups. The mean raw score was 22.0 correct out of 26 (see Table 1). The significant Letter-Sound main effect F(1,60) = 14.99, p < 0.001) indicates that the subjects classified as having high letter-sound knowledge had higher letter-name scores (M = 24.3) than those classified as having low letter-sound knowledge [(M = 19.6). The Training main effect F(2,60) < 1 and the Training × Letter-Sound interaction F(2,60) < 1 were not significant.

Pre-test and post-test measures The pre-test and post-test measures were given to all subjects before phonological awareness training and after it was completed. The words were presented using a tape recording of natural human speech.

Oddity rhyme tasks. Rhyming is a primary measure of phonological awareness skill. Bryant, Bradley, and their colleagues have shown that it is related

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to success in learning to read and spell, but it does not appear to be influenced by literacy (e.g., Bryant, MacLean et al. 1990). We used the three item oddity rhyme tasks reported by Bradley & Bryant (1983; 1985: 40). In these tasks, subjects heard three monosyllable words and responded orally by saying the word having an odd sound (phoneme) in the middle position or final position of the word. For example, 'hug' contains the odd s o u n d / u / i n the series 'pig', 'wig', 'hug'; 'sun' contains the odd sound /n / i n the series 'sun', 'bud', 'mud'.

Each task was preceded by four practice triples and feedback was given on response accuracy. In the experimental trials, subjects were presented with ten triples in each task and they were not given feedback on response accuracy. Since subjects can use rhyming to select the odd word in both of these tasks, the scores on each task were added together to produce a total oddity rhyme score (total = 20 triples). The split-half reliability of this score was 0.87 (Spearman-Brown corrected).

The Bradley & Bryant (1983, 1985) oddity tasks are memory intensive and in order to determine if performance was influenced by differences in basic memory ability, the children were required to recall the 60 words employed in the two tasks, plus 30 additional high frequency monosyllables that were not used. On each trial, they heard three words (e.g., 'bun', 'gun', 'hut') and were required to report them immediately. The children were given two practice trials followed by 30 experimental trials. The subjects were not given feedback on response accuracy. The mean performance was 62.6 out of a total of 90 items (70.0 percent correct). Table 1 shows that the six groups did not differ in their performance on the memory task [Training F(2,60) < 1, Letter-Sound F(1,60) < 1, Training x Letter-Sound F(2,60)

< 11.

Phoneme deletion task. Clusters of consonants that begin (e.g.,/sp/) or end words (e.g., /ft/) tend to be difficult to segment because the phonemes of which they consist are embedded within higher order onset and time units. Literacy should influence performance on tasks requiring segmentation of these clusters into phonemes if there is a specific causal connection going from literacy to awareness of individual phonemes.

In our second measure of phonological awareness, subjects heard a monosyllabic word that began (e.g., 'spot') or ended (e.g., 'lift') with a consonant cluster. They were required to say the word aloud without the first phoneme in the initial consonant deletion task (i.e., 'pot') or without the last phoneme in the final consonant deletion task (i.e., 'lif'). Prior to conducting this task, subjects participated in a syllable deletion task in which they were required to delete the first or the last syllable from six bi-syllable words. The syllable task was designed to introduce the children to the deletion task using a level of speech that was more accessible than the phoneme (e.g., Liberman et al. 1974).

In the phoneme deletion tasks, the subjects were presented with 10 words


in each task. Each condition was preceded by four practice items on which feedback was given, but feedback was not given on the experimental trials. The items began or ended with two consonant phonemes. The phoneme to be deleted was in the first or last position and it was identified on all of the trials (e.g., say 'step' without t he / s / sound ; say 'fast' without the / t / sound) . The item that remained after the phoneme was deleted was a word on one- half of the trials and a nonword on the other half.

The scores on the two tasks were summed to produce a total phoneme deletion score (total -- 20 words) since both tasks involved deleting phonemes from consonant clusters. Several investigators, however, have found that it is easier for subjects to delete a consonant from the end of a word than from the beginning (e.g., Content et al. 1986; Rosner & Simon, 1971). Goswami & Bryant (1990) suggest that subjects adopt the strategy of producing an incomplete word in a final consonant condition without actually identif3dng and manipulating the final phoneme in the same manner as they' do the initial phoneme.

It is possible that an analysis of the types of errors that children make in phoneme deletion tasks can provide some information about the strategies that they employ. Treiman (in press) has shown that subjects often delete the whole cluster rather than a single consonant and suggests that this error reflects the specific difficulty subjects have in extracting individual phonemes from the higher level unit in which they are embedded. We analyzed these whole consonant cluster errors as a proportion of the total errors and found that the proportion did not differ between the initial (M = 0.49) and the final position (M -- 0.47) in the word [F(1,65) < 1]. These results suggest that subjects employ similar strategies when identifying and manipulating phonemes embedded in clusters in the two positions and they provide empirical justification for combining the two scores. The split-half reliability of the total phoneme deletion score was 0.79 (Spearman-Brown corrected).

Phonological awareness training

Training task. Phonological awareness training typically consists of a number of different training tasks that vary in performance requirements (e.g., blending, deletion, recognition), the level of the phonological segment that is accessed (e.g., syllable, rime, onset, or phoneme), and whether or not print is involved. In contrast, we used a single training task based on the oddity task employed by Bradley & Bryant (1983, 1985) because it allows rime segments, onset segments, and phoneme segments to be manipulated within the same task environment. We systematically changed the oddity task so that the children could progress from using rhyming as the basis of their oddity decision early in training to using onsets and phonemes later in training. Print information was made available to one of the two experimental groups during training.

Training in the two experimental conditions involved ten different oddity

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tasks, with each task consisting of ten oddity trip!es. Subjects could base their oddity decision on rhyming in the first four tasks. In the first task, they were instructed to identify the word with the odd sound in the final position in the word (e.g., 'map', 'ham', 'cap'). In the sound task, they were instructed to identify the word with the odd sound in the middle position of the word (e.g., 'lid', 'hid', 'bud'). The middle and final sound conditions were repeated with nonwords in tasks three (e.g., 'bab', 'gag 'dat') and four (e.g., 'fen', 'lun', 'mun'), respectively.

In task five, subjects based their oddity decision on an onset. They were instructed to identify the word with the odd sound in the initial position in the word (e.g., 'bet', 'bag', 'cow'). Task six required the subjects to base their oddity decision on a consonant phoneme that was embedded in the rime and was located in the final position of the word (e.g., 'log', 'dip', 'bag'). The words were selected so that rhyming could not be used to facilitate the decision. These onset and final phoneme conditions were repeated with nonwords in tasks seven (e.g., 'sim', 'suf', 'lav') and eight (e.g., 'nug', 'bip', 'rog'), respectively. Task nine required the subjects to base their oddity decisions on a vowel phoneme that was embedded in the rime and was located in the middle position of the word (e.g., 'sit', 'kid', 'cap'). Again, the subjects could not use rhyming to facilitate their oddity decision. Finally, the middle phoneme condition was repeated with nonwords in task ten (e.g., 'bap', 'rof', 'han').

The words used in the two experimental tasks were CVC monosyllables and the nonwords were derived from these words by changing one or more phonemes. The ten tasks were presented in numerical order and subjects were required to achieve a criterion of seven out of ten correct oddity triples within a task in order to advance to the next task in the series of ten. In order to give subjects multiple opportunities to reach the acquisition criterion, five different series, each consisting of ten oddity triples, were constructed for each task. The correct target word or nonword was changed for each series of ten to prevent subjects from simply memorizing the correct responses. The small pool of monosyllables (N = 183) required that individual words be repeated across series and tasks, but words were not repeated within a series. Subjects who had not reached the criterion after the five different series within a task were required to repeat the series until they reached criterion or had exceeded a total of 17 series of ten triples. Finally, the position of the correct target word within a triple (first, second, third) was varied in order to discourage positional strategies in responding.

The Semantic Category Control was an alternative treatment control condition designed to give subjects experience in classifying words in an oddity task, but using a dimension of classification that did not involve information about the phonological structure of the word. Drawing upon the control condition used by Bradley & Bryant (1983, 1985), subjects in our experiment also classified words on the basis of meaning rather than sound. In task one, they based their oddity decisions on animal category member-


ship. The subjects were instructed to identify the odd word among three words that was not an animal (e.g., 'fog', 'rat', 'pig'). In task two, the oddity decision was based on food category membership (e.g., 'bun', 'loaf', 'bed'), while in task three the oddity decision involved actions (e.g., 'jog', 'mud', 'hit'). Tasks four and five required subjects to base their oddity decisions on words that were associatively related (e.g., 'cap', 'hat', 'car'; 'leg', 'ten', 'foot').

A total of 205 different monosyllable words (157 CVCs, 48 other CV structures) were used in the semantic control condition (there were not any nonwords in this condition). Although it was not possible to use the same words in the experimental and control conditions (e.g., Bradley & Bryant 1983, 1985), 63% of the words used in the experimental and control conditions were identical. Again, the small pool of monosyllables required the repetition of individual words across series and tasks, but words were not repeated within a series. Five different series were also constructed for each task in the control condition and each consisted of ten oddity triples. The correct target word was changed for each series of ten. Subjects who had not reached the criterion of seven out of ten correct after the five different series within a task were required to repeat the series until they reached criterion or had exceeded a total of 17 series of ten triples. Finally, the position of the correct target word within a triple (first, second, third) was varied to discourage positional strategies in responding.

DECtalk speech synthesizer. Recent developments in the hardware and software for computer synthesized speech have made it possible for high quality computer speech to be produced by commercially available micro- processor systems (e.g., Klatt 1987). These developments make it possible to coordinate computer speech with the presentation of text on a computer video monitor, thus providing readers with immediate and online feedback about how a word is pronounced during reading (e.g., Haines & Leong 1989; Lock & Leong 1989; Olofsson 1988; Olson, Flotz & Wise 1986; Wise et al. 1989). Olson and his colleagues (Olson et al. 1986, 1990; Wise et al. 1989; Wise, Olson & Treiman 1990) have shown that computer generated speech feedback techniques can be used to train the word recognition skills of developmental dyslexics and normally achieving readers.

In the present study, we used DECtalk to present the words and nonwords used in our phonological awareness training. It is a high quality speech synthesizer with intelligibility levels very close to that of human speech (95% +) according to studies by Greene & Pisoni (1986), Olson et al. (1986) and Wise at al. (1988, 1990). DECtalk has the advantage of offering invariant pronunciations and timing of speech events, and the speech output can be coordinated with text or graphic displays.

The children heard three words or nonwords spoken by DECtalk with Sony MDR-V7 headphones. As each item was spoken, a three centimeter white square appeared on an EGA color video monitor of a microcomputer. When the series of three items was completed, the children used a light pen

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stylus to point to the square that corresponded to the odd word or nonword in the series. Immediately after the square was touched, DECtatk told the child whether or not the answer was correct and then pronounced the correct item. Simultaneous with this oral feedback from DECtalk, the children in the Speech and Print Feedback group were also shown the three words or nonwords printed in blue; each word was located above its corresponding white square. In addition, the letter corresponding to the critical phoneme in the 'odd' word or nonword was highlighted by being printed in red. The children in the Speech Only Feedback group saw the same blue and red display, but the letters making up the words were replaced by asterisks so that no print feedback was provided. Finally, in the Semantic Category Control group, the children were given the same spatial (asterisks) and auditory feedback display as the children in the Speech Only Feedback group.

RESULTS

Training Subjects were given an average of 17.1 series of ten items each. Each series took about 10 minutes to complete resulting in a total of approximately three hours of training per child spread out over a period of about three months. The six groups did not differ in the total amount of training they received, [Training F(2,60) < 1, Letter-Sound F(1,60) < 1, Training X Letter-Sound F(2,60) < 11.

Measures of acquisition were obtained for each subject in the two experimental groups by dividing the number of correct oddity triples in each of the ten tasks by the total number of oddity triples that were presented for that task (the resulting value was expressed as a percentage). There was considerable variation in the number of the task on which subjects were unable to reach criterion (seven out of ten oddity triples correct); the median task number was five (onset word task) and the range was from two to ten. The fact that only half of our sample of 44 experimental subjects progressed far enough to even participate in task six (final phoneme word task) prevented us from conducting an analysis of variance over all ten tasks; instead, it was confined to tasks one through five.

The average percent correct acquisition scores for tasks one through five are reported in Table 2. Inspection of these data shows that performance declined across the five tasks, but the four experimental groups did not differ substantially until task five when performance for the two groups with low letter-sound knowledge dropped below the two groups with high letter-sound knowledge. These observations were supported by a Training X Letter- Sound X Tasks analysis of variance. Tasks was the only significant main effect F(4,160) = 16.42, p < 0.001 and Letter-Sound X Tasks was the only significant interaction/7(4,160) = 2.37, p < 0.05.


Table 2. Mean percent correct scores for oddity tasks one through five in acquisition*

Speech and print Speech only feedback feedback

H L H L

Task i (rhyme) 68 70 80 69 (22) (13) (14) (14)

Task 2 (rhyme) 74 72 66 66 (15) (18) (20) (16)

Task 3 (rhyme) 73 57 65 68 (12) (23) (21) (30)

Task 4 (rhyme) 64 54 57 51 (14) (33) (38) (30)

Task 5 (onset) 66 37 49 33 (23) (39) (36) (39)

Chance performance = 33 percent. H -- High letter-sound group; L -- Low letter-sound group. * Standard deviations in parentheses.

An analysis of variance on just the four rhyme tasks (tasks 1--4) yielded a significant Tasks main effect F(3,120) = 8.50, p < 0.001; but none of the other main effects or interactions were significant (p > 0.10). In contrast, a significant main effect for Letter-Sound in the analysis of variance on task five (onset word task) showed that subjects with high letter-sound knowledge had better performance than those with low letter-sound knowledge, F(1,40) = 4.55, p < 0.05; none of the other effects were significant (p > 0.10). Additional evidence consistent with this pattern of results is provided by tests for the significance of a proportion. They showed that subjects with low letter-sound knowledge dropped to a level of performance (M = 35%) that was not significantly different from chance (33%) in the onset task (task 5) after being significantly above chance (M = 63%) in the four previous rhyme tasks (ps < 0.05). Subjects with high letter-sound knowledge also performed above chance in the rhyme tasks (M = 68%), but they were above chance in the onset task (M = 58%) as well (ps < 0.02).

In summary, these results indicate that nonreaders' oddity task training performance was significantly above chance and was not influenced by letter- sound knowledge or type of training when the oddity decision was based upon rhyming (i.e., tasks 1--4). When the oddity decision was based on onsets (task 5), however, nonreaders with high letter-sound knowledge continued to perform above chance and better than those with low letter- sound knowledge, whose performance dropped to chance.

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Although type of training was not significant for any of the acquisition results, the Speech and Print Feedback group was almost twenty percent higher than the Speech Only Feedback group in task five for subjects with high letter-sound knowledge. In addition, 73 percent of the children with high letter-sound knowledge in the Speech and Print Feedback group reached criterion in task five allowing them to progress to task six (phoneme task) whereas just 55 percent of the high letter-sound children in the Speech Only Feedback group reached criterion. Finally, only 41 percent of children in the low letter-sound groups reached criterion.

Post-test effects

Oddity rhyme task. Although the acquisition results show that the two experimental groups did not differ in oddity rhyme performance, these results do not indicate what the subjects might have learned during phonological awareness training because their performance was not compared to the Semantic Category Control group. In addition, the pre-test and post-test oddity rhyme tasks differ from those used during acquisition because natural rather than computer-generated speech was used, an oral rather than a light pen response was required, and feedback was not given.

Table 3. Mean correct scores at pre-test and post-test for the oddity rhyme task*

High letter-sound Low letter-sound group group

Pre- Post- Pre- Post- test test Diff. test test Diff.

Speech and print 12.1 12.6 +05 9.4 13.6 +4.2 feedback (3.3) (2.6) (5.6) (2.9)

Speech only 12.8 13.2 +0.4 9.5 13.6 +4.1 feedback (3.3) (3.6) (4.3) (4.0)

Semantic category 12.0 13.8 + 1.8 12.7 11.3 - 1.4 control (2.3) (3.5) (4.1) (3.9)

Maximum score = 20. * Standard deviations in parentheses.

The average pre-test and post-test scores for the oddity rhyme task are presented in Table 3. The oddity rhyme pre-test scores were used to adjust the post-test scores by analysis of covariance for pre-test differences in performance (e.g., Lovett, Ransby & Barron 1988; Lovett et al. 1990). A Training X Letter-Sound analysis of covariance produced a significant interaction, F(2,59) = 3.75, p < 0.05, but neither of the main effects were

196 R . W . B A R R O N ET A L .

gable 4. Mean correct post-test scores on tile oddity rhyme task adjusted by analysis of covariance for pre-test performance*


Experimental Experimental vs. control vs. control difference difference

Speech and print 12.3 -1.3 14.4 +3.6** feedback (2.6) (2.9)

Speech only 12.7 -0.9 14.3 +3.5 ** feedback (3.6) (4.0)

Semantic category 13.6 10.8 control (3.5) (3.9)

Maximum score = 20. * Standard deviations in parentheses. ** = p < 0.025.

significant (p > 0.10). The average adjusted post-test scores are presented in Table 4. The group regressions were homogeneous, F(5,54) = 1.78, p > 0.10, in the analysis of covariance.

Planned comparisons showed that neither of the experimental groups differed from the control group for the children with high letter-sound knowledge [Fs(t,59) < 1]. In contrast, however, both the Speech and Print Feedback group, F(1,59) = 6.68, p < 0.025, and the Speech Only Feedback group, F(1,59) = 6.65, p < 0.025, had significantly higher adjusted post-test scores than the Semantic Category Control group for children with low letter-sound knowledge.

In summary, these results indicate that the phonological awareness training did not have any influence on the oddity rime performance of the children with higher letter-sound knowledge. The training did, however, improve the oddity rhyme performance of the children with low letter-sound knowledge relative to the control group. Their performance improved to the level of the children with high letter-sound knowledge, but the magnitude of this improvement was virtually identical for the two experimental groups indicating that it was not influenced by the availability of print feedback.

Phoneme deletion task. The average pre-test and post-test scores for the phoneme deletion task are presented in Table 5. The phoneme deletion pre- test scores were used to adjust the post-test scores by analysis of covariance for pre-test differences in performance. A Training by Letter-Sound analysis of covariance yielded a significant interaction, F(2,59) = 3.76, p < 0.05, but neither of the main effects were significant (Fs < 1). The average adjusted

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Table 5. Mean correct scores at pre-test and post-test for the phoneme deletion task*

197


Pre- Post- Pre- Post- test test Diff. test test Diff.

Speech and print 4.9 7.6 +2.7 3.6 3.3 -0.3 feedback (4.4) (5.6) (2.2) (2.5)

Speech only 6.2 7.5 +1.3 4.1 6.7 +2.6 feedback (2.6) (4.5) (3.5) (3.9)

Semantic category 7.6 6.8 --0.8 4.0 5.8 +1.8 control (5.2) (5.5) (3.7) (5.2)

Maximum Score = 20. * Standard deviations in parentheses.

post-test scores are presented in Table 6. The group regressions were homogeneous, F(5,54) = 1.67, p > 0.10, for the analysis of covariance.

Planned comparisons for children with high letter-sound knowledge showed that the children in the Speech and Print Feedback group obtained higher adjusted post-test scores than the children in the Semantic Category Control group, F(1,59) -- 4.67, p < 0.05. The Speech Only Feedback group, however, was not significantly different from the Semantic Category Control group,/7(1,59) = 1.60, p > 0.10. Planned comparisons for c~d ren with low letter-sound knowledge showed that neither of the experimental groups had significantly higher adjusted post-test scores than the Semantic Category Control group (ps > 0.10).

In summary, these results indicate that nonreaders" phoneme deletion performance can be improved relative to an alternative training control group when they have high letter-sound knowledge and they receive print as well as speech feedback during training. In contrast, nonreaders with high letter-sound knowledge who did not receive print feedback during training failed to show significant improvements in phoneme deletion performance relative to the control group. Furthermore, nonreaders with low letter-sound knowledge did not show significant improvements in phoneme deletion performance relative to the control group regardless of whether the feedback they received during training involved print and speech or just speech alone.

Reading and letter-sound measures. It is possible that the changes in phonological awareness skill reported above can be attributed to the children suddenly shifting from being nonreaders to being readers during the three month interval between pre-testing and post-testing. In order to test this possibility, the Woodcock Word Identification and Word Attack sub-tests were also given at post-test. The average performance on the Word Iden-


Table 6. Mean correct post-test scores on the phoneme deletion task adjusted by analysis of covariance for pre-test performance*


Experimental vs. control difference

Experimental vs. control difference

Speech and print 7.8 +3.1"* 4.6 -2.1 feedback (5.6) (2.5)

Speech only 6.5 +1.8 7.6 +0.9 feedback (4.5) (3.9)

Semantic category 4.7 6.7 control (5.5) (5.2)

Maximum score ~ 20. * Standard deviations in parentheses. ** =p < 0.05.

tification sub-test increased by only one-half of a word to a mean of 1.47 words. An analysis of covariance employing the pre-test scores as a covariate indicated that this increase was not significant for any of the groups [Training F(2,59) < 1, Letter-Sound F(1,59) -- 2.02, p > 0.10; Training X Group F(2,59) < 1]. Performance on the Word Attack sub-test remained very low (M -- 0.30) and continued to average below one word correct for each of the six groups. Again, statistical analyses were not conducted on these scores as they were virtually all zeros and there was no variance in several of the groups.

Finally, letter-sound naming performance increased by 3.1 letter sounds from pre-test to post-test to a mean of 15.9. However, an analysis of covariance using pre-test letter-sound naming as a covariate showed that this increase in proto-literate knowledge was not significant for any of the groups [Training F(2,59) < 1, Letter-Sound F(1,59) < 1, Training X Letter-Sound F(2,59) < 1]. In summary, these results reduce the possibility of attributing the gains in oddity rhyming and phoneme deletion to increases in literacy and proto-literacy knowledge acquired during the same time period, but outside of the specific context of the experimental training.

DISCUSSION

Consideration of the relationships that might exist between phonological awareness and literacy tends to be limited by the assumption that a minimal level of literacy consists of the ability to read whole words aloud and spell

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them to dictation. Failure to perform these difficult production tasks does not, however, indicate an absence of knowledge about fundamental relationships between spoken and written language. In fact, there is considerable evidence that nonreaders know a great deal about corresponding phonological and orthographic units even though they are unable to assemble this knowledge and produce an accurate oral reading or written spelling response (e.g., Adams 1990; Barron 1986, 1991; Ehri & Wilce 1985). The results of the present experiment suggest that one form of this proto-literate knowledge, letter-sound association knowledge, has a causal influence upon the acquisition of some phonological awareness skills among children who are unable to read and spell.

The present results provide evidence for a causal connection going from proto-literacy to phoneme segmentation. The phoneme deletion results indicate that nonreaders who had high letter-sound knowledge and received print feedback during learning produced significantly greater improvement in phoneme deletion performance than their alternative training control group. The remaining experimental groups (i.e., nonreaders with high letter-sound knowledge who did not receive print feedback and both groups of nonreaders with low letter-sound knowledge), however, failed to produce significant improvement in phoneme deletion performance compared to their alternative training control groups.

Although there were not sufficient data to determine if the acquisition results yielded the same pattern as the post-test results, a t-figher percentage of high letter-sound knowledge clfildren in the print feedback group progressed to oddity phoneme training (task 6) than in the other groups. Finally, the phoneme segmentation knowledge that the nonreaders acquired during oddity task training with computer synthesized speech does not appear to be task specific. The evidence indicates that the children were able to transfer that knowledge to the phoneme deletion task with natural speech used in post-testing.

These results are consistent with Ball & Blact-tman (1991) and Hohn & Ehri (1983) because they indicate that phoneme awareness training is most successful when it is combined with training which encourages subjects to form and use letter-sound associations to segment phonemes in words. They also expand upon the findings of these investigators in two ways. First, the results indicate that the gains in phonological awareness reflect improvement in the awareness of phonemes rather than onsets. Contrary to previous studies (e.g., Ball & Btachman 1991; Cmmingham 1990; Hohn & Ehri 1983; Lundberg et al. 1988), subjects in the present study were required to delete initial or final consonant phonemes from consonant dusters in words in the pre-test and post-test tasks rather than to delete onsets or a combination of onsets and phonemes.

Second, the results indicate that nonreaders' level of letter-sound knowledge prior to training is important in determining whether or not they will benefit from the availability of print information during phonological seg-


mentation training. It should be noted, however, that training letter-sound knowledge itself may not be as effective as combining it with phonological segmentation training because Ball & Blachman (1991) showed that letter- sound training alone was not effective in increasing phonological awareness. The present evidence suggests that nonreaders may require letter-sound knowledge, either acquired prior to training or during it, and some instruction in how to use that knowledge in order to increase their phoneme segmentation skill.

The acquisition results indicate that only the children with high letter- sound knowledge were able to segment onsets from rimes and use the onset information to perform above chance in the oddity onset word task (task 5). The performance of the high letter-sound group is consistent with Kirtley et al. (1989), who also found that nonreaders could perform oddity onset word tasks, but the chance level performance of the low letter-sound knowledge group is not consistent.

This pattern of discrepant results can be interpreted as indicating that Kirtley et al.'s (1989) nonreaders possessed high letter-sound knowledge and that this form of proto-literate knowledge is necessary in order to segment onsets from rimes. Experiments by Content et al. (1.986) raise questions, however, about the necessity of high letter-sound knowledge in segmenting onsets. These investigators found that nonreaders with low letter-sound knowledge can learn to delete onsets from rimes in an onset deletion task when they are given feedback about their performance. One possible inter- pretation of these conflicting results is that letter-sound knowledge is related to relatively rapid acquisition of onset awareness in an oddity onset task, but onset awareness can also be attained through extensive training in an onset deletion task by children with low letter-sound knowledge. Whether or not high letter-sound knowledge might also facilitate transfer of onset awareness across various phonological awareness tasks remains to be determined.

One central finding in this experiment is that letter-sound knowledge does not influence the oddity rhyming skills of nonreaders. The acquisition results show that neither pre-experimental differences in letter-sound knowledge or the availability of print feedback during learning influenced the acquisition of rhyming skill. These findings are further reinforced by post-test evidence showing that children with high letter-sound knowledge did not increase their rhyming skill compared to their alternative training control group. Instead, the only significant increases in rhyming skill were made by children with low letter-sound knowledge. Their performance increased to the level of the high letter-sound group, but these increases were not influenced by the availability of print feedback.

These oddity rhyme results are consistent with the conclusions of investigators on both sides of the direction of causality controversy because the 5 , are unanimous in agreeing that literacy does not influence the acquisition of rhyming skill. The present results extend their conclusions, however, by

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showing that proto-literacy also does not influence the acquisition of rhyming skill.

The fact that the nonreaders showed significant post-test gains on. both oddity rhyming and phoneme deletion provides evidence that the phonological knowledge acquired through DECtalk computer speech can be transferred to testing situations involving natural speech. This finding extends the scope of DECtalk-based computer systems for teaching and investigating the skills of literacy by showing that it can be used to train the prereading skill of phonological awareness.

Even greater instructional and scientific value may be derived from computer speech technology, however, by using the capability of DECtalk- based systems to provide online feedback in which words are segmented into phonological units of various sizes and the presentation of those units is coordinated with corresponding orthographic units (e.g., Olson et al. 1990; Wise et al. 1990). The present investigation, and those of others (e.g., Olson et al. 1986; Olofsson 1988; Wise et al 1988), represent a first step in developing self-teaching computer-speech systems that provide children with specific information for making the alphabetic code more accessible.

Considered together, the results of the present study appear to be consistent with bi-directional causal models of the relationship between phonological awareness and literacy. They also indicate that the level of the phonological segment and the nature of children's literacy are important factors in specifying the complex set of interactive relationships that are involved. A tentative description of the pattern of these relationships is presented below. Our evidence indicates that neither proto-literacy or literacy influence the acquisition of rhyming skill, but evidence from Bradley & Bryant (1983, 1985) and Bryant et al. (1990) indicates that rhyming skill influences the acquisition of literacy. Our evidence also indicates that proto- literacy influences the acquisition of phoneme awareness, and possibly onset awareness, among nonreaders and nonspellers while other evidence indicates that literacy influences the acquisition of onset and phoneme awareness among readers and spellers (e.g., Bertelson & deGelder 1989; Morais et al. 1987; Peffetti et al. 1987). Finally, onset and phoneme awareness also influence the acquisition of literacy (e.g., Bradley & Bryant 1983, 1985; Stanovich 1986; Wagner & Torgeson 1987).

Given sufficient training, nonreaders with low letter-sound knowledge may be able to acquire phoneme awareness skills without any print feedback (e.g., Content et al. 1986; Cunninghaxn 1990; Lundberg et al. 1988). Our findings indicate, however, that letter-sound knowledge facilitates the acquisition of these skills and, as a result, raise questions about the cognitive consequences of proto-literacy. One consequence is that the acquisition of letter-sound knowledge may change the nature of the representation of children's speech sounds so that letters activate sounds and sounds activate letters (Adams 1990; Barron 1991; Seidenberg & MacClelland 1989). This reciprocal

202 R .W. BARRON ET AL.

letter-sound representation may, as Ehri (e.g., 1978, 1979, 1984) has proposed, allow letters to function as symbols for speech sounds with the possible result that speech sounds will be more accessible to conscious attention and easier to remember and to manipulate in phoneme awareness tasks.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This research was supported by a grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada to R. W. Barron, H. H. C. Marmurek, and L. P. Haines. The authors gratefully acknowledge R. K. Olson and B. Wise for helping us get started with DECtalk, R. McCabe for his programming expertise in getting DECtalk to talk to us, and A. Salsberg for his able assistance in testing, training, and data tabulation. Finally, we wish to thank the children, parents, teachers, principals, and administrators for their enthusiastic support of this proiect.

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Address for correspondence: Roderick W. Barton, Department of Psychology, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario NIG 2W1, Canada

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Teaching prereading skills with a talking computer