Gaining alphabetic insight: Is phoneme manipulation skill or identity knowledge causal?

The type of phoneme awareness that supports reading acquisition has been unclear. Phoneme awareness is usually operationalized as skill in manipulating phonemes in blending and segmentation tasks. However, B. Byrne and R. Fielding-Barnsley (1990) argued that phoneme awareness is knowledge of phoneme identities (i.e., recognition of individual phonemes in spoken word contexts). In a double-blind teaching experiment, 48 kindergartners were randomly assigned to identity, manipulation, or language experience programs. Children in the manipulation program made significantly greater gains on tests of blending and segmentation. However, children in the identity program made significantly greater gains on a test of phonetic cue reading, a measure of rudimentary decoding ability. Teaching recognition of particular phonemes in word contexts may help beginners gain insight into the alphabetic principle and apply their insights in early word identification.