What is phonological awareness?

Phonological awareness was hypothesized to be composed of at least 3 component skills— IQ, verbal short-term memory, and speech perception. In addition, 4 linguistic manipulations within 3 phonological awareness tasks were theorized to affect item difficulties. Multiple measures of IQ, verbal short-term memory, speech perception, and phonological awareness were administered to 136 3rd and 4th graders. Application of structural equation modeling revealed that IQ, speech perception, and verbal short-term memory each contributed unique variance to the phonological awareness construct. All 4 experimental linguistic manipulations influenced phonological awareness item difficulties as well. Results underscore the impor-tance of speech perception for phonological awareness. Dozens of studies have purportedly measured phonolog-ical awareness in various ways for participants at many levels, from preschoolers (e.g., Byrne & Fielding-Barnsley, 1991) to adults (e.g., Pennington, Van Orden, Smith, Green, & Haith, 1990). The importance of phonological awareness in studies of reading development and impairment can