Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, Volume 23, 176-182, April 1992
Effects of Phonological Impairment on Word, Syllable,
and Phoneme Segmentation and Reading
Penelope E. Webster
Amy Solomon Plante
University of New Hampshire, Durham
The primary purpose of this study was to compare the phono-
logical awareness ability of children with persistent phonologi-
cal impairment to that of phonologically normal children. We
also studied the impact of speech intelligibility on beginning
reading skills. Eleven moderate to severely unintelligible chil-
dren and 11 phonologically normal children between the ages of
6:5 (years:months) and 8:6 were administered four measures of
phonological awareness and one measure of word recognition
(reading) ability. Phonologically normal children scored signifi-
cantly higher on three of the four phonological awareness mea-
sures. There were no significant differences for word recogni-
tion. Multiple regression analysis yielded speech intelligibility
as a highly significant predictor of performance on three of the
four phonological awareness tasks. We concluded that phonolog-
ical awareness is closely associated with productive phonologi-
cal ability independent of mental age, chronological age, and
educational experience.
KEY WORDS: metalinguistic awareness, phonological aware-
ness, phonological impairment, reading
Speech-language pathologists have in recent years paid
increasingly more attention to the description and devel-
opment of metalinguistic awareness in children with
communication disorders (Kamhi & Koenig, 1985; Kamhi,
Lee, & Nelson, 1985; Kamhi & Catts, 1986; Kamhi, Catts,
Mauer, Apel, & Gentry, 1988; Liles, Schulman, & Bart-
lett, 1977). Interest in this area is due in large part to the
burgeoning literature linking metalinguistic awareness
and, more specifically, phonological awareness, to read-
ing acquisition (for reviews see Blachman, 1984a; Down-
ing & Valtin, 1984; Wagner, 1986; Wagner & Torgesen,
1987). Metalinguistic awareness refers to the ability to
think about and consciously manipulate language (Tun-
mer, Pratt, & Herriman, 1984). Phonological awareness
entails conscious manipulation of phonemes in spoken
language (Stanovich, 1986).
Research investigating metalinguistic abilities of com-
municatively disordered children has, for the most part,
focused on those with language impairment (Kamhi &
C 1992, American Speech-Language-Hearing Association
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Koenig, 1985; Kamhi, Lee, & Nelson, 1985; Kamhi &
Catts, 1986; Kamhi et al., 1988). Taken together, this
research indicates that children with language impair-
ment show delays in the acquisition of certain metalin-
guistic abilities when tested early in their development.
These delays, particularly in phonological awareness, do
not seem to persist with maturation. Age at time of testing
and choice of experimental tasks are thought to contribute
to outcome differences.
In contrast to language impairment, much less is known
about the plight of phonologically impaired children with
respect to metalinguistic awareness. One could argue that
children with persistent phonological disorders will have
difficulty with metalinguistic tasks, specifically phonolog-
ical awareness.
We speculate that this may be the case because phono-
logical awareness depends, at least in part, on the ability
to effectively code phonological information in working
memory (Jorm & Share, 1983). For example, common
tasks measuring phonological awareness, such as seg-
menting a spoken word into its constituent phonemes,
require holding a word in working memory for analysis.
In support of this, Wagner and Torgesen (1987) reported
data showing an interrelationship between phonological
awareness and phonological coding in working memory.
They suggested that deficiencies in the latter may lead to
accompanying deficiencies in the former.
Productive phonological impairment'may hinder per-
formance in phonological awareness because it precludes
efficient phonological coding in working memory. Badde-
ley and Hitch (1974), in their model of working memory,
proposed that subvocal speech rehearsal (a part of their
Articulatory Loop subsystem) is used to hold and manip-
ulate linguistically codable information in working mem-
ory. Phonological impairment, then, may affect the ability
to use subvocal speech rehearsal to maintain coded infor-
mation in working memory for phonological awareness
tasks. If this is true, children with phonological impair-
ment may be at risk for failure in such tasks, and, given
the strong association between phonological awareness
and reading reported in the literature (Bradley & Bryant,
176 0161-1461/92/2302-0176$01.00/0
 WEBSTER & PLANTE: PhonologicalImpairment 177

1983, 1985; Liberman & Shankweiler, 1985; Stanovich, Morley, 1965). The comparison group contained approx-
1986; Wagner & Torgesen, 1987), they in turn may be at imately equal numbers of males and females; this propor-
risk for reading difficulty as well. tion is reflective of the normal population. All children
To our knowledge, no one has examined directly the were from white middle-class homes in the same geo-
effects of phonological impairment on phonological aware- graphic area. All attended local public schools, ranging in
ness. Existing literature is limited to retrospective and level from kindergarten to second grade.
prospective studies on educational outcome for language- Each subject in the PI group previously had been
and speech-impaired children (Aram & Nation, 1980; Hall diagnosed as having a phonological impairment by a
& Tomblin, 1978; King, Jones, & Laskey, 1982; Levi, certified speech-language pathologist. Average age at
Capozzi, Fabrizi, & Sechi, 1982; Shriberg & Kwiatkowski, initial identification was 4:0; the range was 3:0 to 5:1. All
1988). Within this literature, the finding that early isolated subjects had received, and were currently receiving,
phonological impairment does not place children at signif- intervention services from the time of initial identifica-
icant risk for later academic difficulty has emerged (Hall & tion. None had identifiable neurological, visual, emo-
Tomblin, 1978; Tyler & Edwards, 1986; Shriberg & Kwiat- tional, or hearing impairments. Expressive language
kowski, 1988). Indeed, the probability of reading difficulty skills at initial identification were intact for semantics and
appears to be higher for those with syntactic and semantic pragmatics for all subjects, as determined from file re-
problems than for those with isolated phonological prob- views. Expressive syntax and/or morphology, however,
lems (Levi et al., 1982). were initially identified as impaired in 9 of the 11 chil-
The above work contains investigations that have fo- dren. At the time of the present study, file reviews
cused on children with early histories of phonological showed that 7 continued to show deficits in productive
problems. For the most part, the articulation problems morphology. Measurement of productive morphology
reported in these studies had largely resolved by ages 5 to was confounded, however, by the severe phonological
6, the point at which formal reading instruction begins in deficits that some of the children exhibited.
this country. For children with moderate to severe pho- All PI subjects had to perform within normal limits on
nological involvement that persists into the school years, two measures of language comprehension: the Peabody
outcome is still a question. Picture Vocabulary Test-Revised (PPVT-R) (Dunn &
Our primary purpose in this study was to compare Dunn, 1981) and the Test of Auditory Comprehension of
phonologically impaired children (PI) with phonologi- Language-Revised (TACL-R) (Carrow-Woolfolk, 1985),
cally normal children (PN) on tasks of sentence, syllable, Subtests II (Grammatical Morphemes) and III (Elaborat-
and phoneme segmentation and on a task of single-word ed Sentences). Results of these tests are shown in Table
recognition. Another purpose was to predict performance 1. PI subjects were required to have overall speech
on each task. Specific research questions were as follows:
1. Is there a significant difference between PI and PN TABLE 1. Group means and standard deviations (SD) for chrono-
children in performance on selected measures of logical age, education in months, nonverbal IQ, nonverbal men-
phonological awareness? If so, is this difference in tal age (MA), and receptive language (PPVT-R, TACL-R II, III).
performance proportional to the degree of phonolog-
ical impairment? PI PN t ratio
2. Is productive phonological ability associated with
beginning word-recognition ability? Chronological age
Mean 84.6 80.9 1.13
SD 7.7 5.5
Education in months
METHOD Mean 12.3 13.6 -0.64
SD 7.1 4.1
Nonverbal IQ
Subjects Mean 96.3 102.9 -1.83
SD 5.1 10.8
Nonverbal MA
Subjects were 22 children ranging in age from 6:5 Mean 81.3 83.0 -1.372
(years:months) to 8:6, with a mean of 6:10. To be included SD 6.6 6.8
in the study, all subjects had to score within normal limits PPVT-R
Mean 96.8 110.5 -2.72*
on the Test of Nonverbal Intelligence (TONI) (Brown, SD 10.2 10.6
Sherbenou, & Johnson, 1982). IQ scores ranged from 86 TACL-R II
to 123, with a mean of 99.6. Mean 48.6 46.8 0.03
Eleven children with persistent moderate-to-severe SD 4.7 7.0
TACL-R III
expressive phonological impairment were individually Mean 47.7 53.9 -2.45*
matched for mental age to 11 PN children. Ten out of 11 SD 6.3 5.9
of the PI group were male; the PN group consisted of 6
females and 5 males. The sample of PI subjects reflects Note. PPVT-R = Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-Revised;
the higher incidence of boys with developmental lan- TACL-R II, III = Test of Auditory Comprehension of Language-
Revised Subtests II and III; PI = phonologically impaired; PN =
guage disorders reported in the literature (Beitchman, phonologically normal.
Nair, Ferguson, & Patel, 1986; Ludlow & Cooper, 1983; *p < .05

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 178 Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools
intelligibility ratings of 80% or less using Weiss's (1980)
procedure for calculating intelligibility scores.
Subjects were administered the Khan-Lewis Phonolog-
ical Analysis (KLPA) (Khan & Lewis, 1986). They were
required to have two or more developmental process
ratings of 4. Although our subjects were outside the
norms for these ratings, we considered any process rated
4 as excessive in children older than 5:11 (Khan-Lewis
1986, p. 71). In addition, all PI subjects demonstrated
greater than 30% process usage on two or more processes.
KLPA composite scores ranged from 7 to 35 (mean = 16.8;
SD = 9.0); age-equivalent scores ranged from 30 to 71
months (mean = 49.9; SD = 12.0). Percentiles on the
Goldman Fristoe Test of Articulation (GFTA) (Goldman
& Fristoe, 1986) ranged from 0 to 35 (mean = 10; SD =
10). The following phonological processes were observed
in the PI children: deletion of final consonants, syllable
reduction, palatal fronting, deaffrication, consonant har-
mony, stridency deletion, stopping of fricatives and affri-
cates, cluster simplification, liquid simplification, and
deletion of initial consonants.
The 11 PN children were matched to the PI children on
the basis of nonverbal mental age (TONI). We considered
mental age to be the preferred matching variable because
we suppose a close relationship between metacognitive
processes and metalinguistic awareness (Donaldson,
1978; Flavell, 1977; Hakes, Evans, & Tunmer, 1980).
The PN group had no known speech, language, hear-
ing, or academic problems. As can be seen in Table 1, the
PN and PI groups did not differ significantly in chrono-
logical age, mental age, IQ, or educational level. The
groups did differ significantly, however, on two of three
measures of receptive language (PPVT-R and TACL-R
Subtest III). While the PI group performed within normal
limits on both measures, controlling for mental age may
have caused the PN group to score slightly higher.
Procedure
All subjects were tested individually in one session in
a quiet area located in their public school or in the
University Communication Disorders Clinic. Examiners
included the authors of the present study and a trained
graduate student in speech-language pathology. Random-
ization procedures were implemented for test stimuli to
eliminate the effects of fatigue bias.
The PI group first was randomly administered the
following: KLPA, TONI, PPVT-R, and TACL-R. In addi-
tion, subjects produced a 5-minute audiotaped conversa-
tional speech sample. The following series of experimen-
tal tasks, all of which required nonvocal responses, were
then administered at random: sentence-to-word segmen-
tation, word-to-syllable segmentation, word-to-phoneme
segmentation, pseudoword-to-phoneme segmentation,
and single word recognition.
Control subjects were randomly administered the
TONI, PPVT-R, and TACL-R, followed by the same
experimental tasks as the above.
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23 176-182 April 1992
Contextual speech sample. Five-minute audiotaped
spontaneous speech samples were obtained and scored
by 3 naive listeners for intelligibility. Each listener was
instructed to audit 100 consecutive syllables chosen at
random from subjects' speech samples. Scores were cal-
culated by subtracting the number of unintelligible
words (1.5 syllables = 1 word) from the total of 100 words
in each sample. An average of the three listeners' scores
for each subject then was calculated for the ensuing
statistical analysis. All interjudge correlations (Judges
A-B, r = 0.98; Judges B-C, r = 0.96; Judges A-C, r =
0.97) reached significance at the p < .01 level.
Segmentation tasks. Stimuli and procedures for the
segmentation tasks were adapted from the Test of Aware-
ness of Language Segments [TALS] (Sawyer, 1987). Part
A, Sentences-to-Words, items 1 through 5, was adminis-
tered, followed by Part B, Words-to-Syllables, all 10
items, and Part C, Words-to-Sounds, all 18 items. The
tasks required the child to lay out blocks, one for each
word, syllable, or phoneme in response to a word read
aloud by the examiner. No vocal responses were required
of the children. Responses were scored as correct or
incorrect and converted to overall percentage correct.
Research has shown that a possible difficulty with the
use of real words as segmentation stimuli is that it may
confound the segmentation of phonemes with the seg-
mentation of graphemes (Tunmer & Nesdale, 1982). To
avoid the problem of using a grapheme strategy (placing
a block for each letter rather than for each phoneme),
pronounceable pseudowords were used in addition to the
TALS tasks. Pseudoword-to-sound task items were 16
single-syllable words taken from Kamhi and Catts' (1986)
experimental protocol. We presented five two-segment
syllables, seven three-segment syllables, and four four-
segment syllables to subjects, who were required to lay
out one block for each phoneme contained in the
pseudowords read aloud by the examiner. Responses
were scored correct or incorrect and converted to overall
percentage correct.
For each of the segmentation tasks, the children under-
went training trials. These consisted of three demonstration
items followed by three practice items. During the demon-
stration phase, the child observed as the examiner spoke
each target sentence or word, followed by examiner repre-
sentation of the appropriate segments using the blocks. For
the practice items, the examiner produced the stimulus
word or sentence and instructed the child to represent
segmentations. Corrective feedback was provided.
Word recognition task. In order to accommodate the
children with phonological impairment, it was necessary
to choose a single-word recognition task that did not
require vocal responses. Test 2 from Part A, primary level
(grades 1.5-2.4) of the Stanford Achievement Test (1972)
met this requirement. It is a single-word recognition task
that employs a multiple-choice format. The child's task
was to select one printed word of three that best matched
the black and white line drawing presented at the top of
each three-item box. For example, in the first box, a
picture of a dog running is followed by three multiple-
choice items. The first item contains the word dog along
 WEBSTER & PLANTE: Phonological Impairment 179

with here and and. The children were asked to point to
their best choices. A total of 21 test items were included.
One practice box with three multiple choice items was
presented prior to administration of the 21 test items.
Each child was presented all 21 items. Responses were
scored correct or incorrect and converted to overall per-
centage correct.
RESULTS
Group Mean Comparisons
Our first analysis was a matched-pairs t test. As can be
seen in Table 2, the mental age (MA) matched PN
children performed significantly better than the PI chil-
dren on three segmentation tasks: word-phoneme (t [10]
= -3.31, p < .01), pseudoword (t [10] = -2.46, p < .05),
sentence-word (t [10] = -3.14, p < .05). Group differ-
ences were not found to be significant for the word-
syllable segmentation and word-recognition tasks.
Of interest is a comparison of PI group vs. PN group
standard deviations for each dependent variable. The PI
children exhibited substantially more variability than PN
children across each task. The mean coefficient of varia-
tion (CV) across the five tasks was three times larger for
the PI group (CV = 60.6%) than for the PN group (CV =
19.4%). This substantial difference indicated the need for
nonparametric validation. Dependent variable mean
scores for each group therefore were compared with the
Wilcoxon Matched-Pairs Signed-Rank Test (Siegel,
1956). Results, which are reported in Table 2, confirm
those provided by the t test.
CorrelationAnalysis
Five separate model specifications were tested using
ordinary least square multiple regression. We used cor-
relation analysis to aid in choosing independent varia-
bles, to detect multicollinearity, and to determine if each
model tested a separate aspect of language. Data from all
22 subjects were used for this procedure. However,
because we had a relatively small sample size, some
correlations may be spurious and thus should be inter-
preted with caution. Data were analyzed using the statis-
tical software package Micro Time Series Processor ver-
sion 5.1 (MicroTSP) (Lilien, 1987).
Correlationsbetween independent and dependent var-
iables. Table 3 presents the matrix of simple Pearson
intercorrelations among independent variable candidates
and each dependent variable. As can be seen,
pseudoword segmentation and word-phoneme segmenta-
tion were highly correlated with speech intelligibility
(r = 0.62, p < .01; r = 0.64, p < .01) and moderately
correlated with receptive language (PPVT-R) (r = 0.51, p
< .05; r = 0.46, p < .05). Sentence-word segmentation
was moderately correlated with mental age and education
(r = 0.46, p < .05; r = 0.43, p < .05), and highly correlated
with speech intelligibility (r = 0.64, p < .01). Note that
chronological age (CA) was uniformly insignificant and
that education was significantly correlated (r = 0.43, p <
.05) with only sentence-word segmentation.
Correlations between independent variable candi-
dates. Table 4 contains a summary of the simple correla-
tions between independent variable candidates. Recep-
tive language (PPVT-R) showed a moderate negative
correlation with CA (r = -0.48, p < .05) and a strong
positive correlation with speech intelligibility (r = 0.58,

TABLE 2. Descriptive statistics for dependent variables.

Task PI PN t ratio W
Pseudoword segmentation
Mean 35.0 57.2 -2.46* 10.0
SD 22.2 16.0
Range 62.0 50.0
Word recognition
Mean 47.2 66.0 -2.16 21.0
SD 27.0 21.2
Range 82.0 62.0
Sentence-word segmentation
Mean 69.1 100.0 -3.14* 0.0
SD 32.7 0.0
Range 100.0 0.0
Word-syllable segmentation
Mean 70.0 90.0 -1.67 13.5
SD 31.9 16.1
Range 90.0 50.0
Word-phoneme segmentation
Mean 35.5 72.6 -3.31** 7.0
SD 31.9 13.9
Range 88.0 44.0
Note. PI = phonologically impaired; PN = phonologically normal; W = the smaller of the sum of
positive or negative (in absolute value) ranks.
*p < .05; **p < .01

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 180 Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools 23 176182 April 1992

TABLE 3. Correlation of independent variable candidates with correlated highly with sentence-word segmentation and
dependent variables. word-phoneme segmentation (r = 0.64, p < .01; r = 0.57,
p < .01). And, finally, sentence-word segmentation corre-
Independent Variable Candidates lated highly with word-phoneme segmentation (r = 0.73,
Dependent p < .01). We note that of all the experimental measures, the
Variables PPVT-R CA MA SI ED ability to segment sentences into words was distinct from
PS 0.51* -0.12 -0.02 0.62** 0.26 the others. In contrast, the ability to recognize words and
WR 0.30 0.30 0.32 0.35 0.34 to segment words into phonemes was global in nature.
SWS 0.31 0.19 0.46* 0.64** 0.43*
WSS 0.18 0.12 0.05 0.32 0.04
WPS 0.46* -0.02 0.15 0.77** 0.10
Multiple Regression Analysis
Note. PPVT-R = Peabody Vocabulary Test-Revised; CA = chro-
nological age; MA = mental age; SI = speech intelligibility; ED =
education in months; PS = pseudoword segmentation; WR = word Regression model design. As reported in Table 3, mul-
recognition; SWS = sentence-word segmentation; WSS = word- ticollinearity existed between CA and ED. The lack of
syllable segmentation; WPS = word-phoneme segmentation. any significant relationship between CA and each depen-
*p < .05; **p < .01
dent variable suggested its minimal likelihood of serving
as a good predictor. ED was therefore chosen in its place
TABLE 4. Correlation of independent variable candidates.
because of the supposed importance of education in
metalinguistic experience. The choice between receptive
PPVT-R CA MA SI ED language (PPVT-R) and productive phonological ability
PPVT-R 1.00 -0.48* 0.08 0.58** -0.03 (SI) was more difficult. We chose to discard PPVT-R from
CA 1.00 0.40 -0.19 0.70** the final model because the correlation coefficients be-
MA 1.00 0.15 0.44* tween SI and the dependent variables were not only
SI 1.00 0.16 larger and more significant, but also more frequent (3 vs.
ED 1.00
2) than those obtained for PPVT-R. A final compelling
Note. PPVT-R = Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-Revised; CA reason for choosing SI is its critical theoretical impor-
= chronological age; MA = mental age; SI = speech intelligi- tance to this study.
bility; ED = education in months. Regression statistics. Results for each of the five tasks
*p < .05; **p < .01 are reported in Table 6. The model specified failed to
achieve significance for the word recognition (F [3, 18] =
p < .01). As expected, CA correlated strongly with edu- 1.79, p < .05; r2 = .10) and word-syllable segmentation (F
cation (r = 0.70, p < .01); a significant moderate correla- [3, 18] = 0.69, p < .05; r2 = .00) tasks. For the three
tion (r = 0.44, p < .05) was observed between months of remaining dependent variables, however, the model
education (ED) and MA. The presence of these signifi- specification was significant: pseudoword segmentation
cant relationships between independent variable candi- at the p < .05 level (F [3, 18] = 5.01), and sentence-word
dates thus directed us to choose between CA and ED as segmentation (F [3, 18] = 8.28) and word-phoneme seg-
measures of experience and between PPVT-R and speech mentation (F [3, 18] = 8.69) at the p < .01 level. The
intelligibility (SI) as measures of language ability in model explained about one-third (r2 = 0.36) of the vari-
designing our regression model. ance in pseudoword segmentation and one-half of the
Correlations between dependent variables. In Table 5, variance in sentence-word segmentation (r2 = 0.51) and
correlations between the five dependent variables are word-phoneme segmentation (r2 = 0.52). An additional
shown. Pseudoword segmentation correlated moderately measure of goodness of fit is provided by the standard
with word recognition (r = 0.45, p < .05) and highly with error of the regression; it is less than 22 for the three
sentence-word and word-phoneme segmentation (r = significant models and more than 24 for the two insignif-
0.58, p < .01; r = 0.72, p < .01). Word recognition icant models.
Independent variables. The constant term failed to
reach significance in any model, indicating that segmen-
TABLE 5. Correlation of dependent variables. tation ability was not constant across the 22 subjects. MA
was not a significant factor influencing performance on
PS WR SWS WSS WPS these language tasks; the regression coefficients were
uniformly insignificant at p < .05. Likewise, ED failed to
PS 1.00 0.45* 0.58** -0.16 0.72** be a significant predictor of segmentation ability; the
WR 1.00 0.64** 0.33 0.57**
SWS 1.00 0.08 0.73** coefficients were uniformly insignificant at p < .05.
WSS 1.00 0.16 SI represented a highly significant predictor of perfor-
WPS 1.00 mance on each of three segmentation tasks. The positive
regression coefficients increased for each task: for
Note. PS = pseudoword segmentation; WR = word recognition; pseudoword segmentation, B = 0.45 (t [20] = 3.46, p <
SWS = sentence-word segmentation; WSS = word-syllable seg-
mentation; WPS = word-phoneme segmentation. .003); for sentence-word segmentation, B = 0.51 (t [20] =
*p < .05; **p < .01 3.61, p < .002); and for word-phoneme segmentation, B =

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TABLE 6. Multiple regression results.
PS
Constant 61.23
Independent variables
MA -0.76
SI 0.45***
ED 1.03
Regression statistics
Adjusted R2 0.36
SER 17.58
F Statistic 5.01*
Note. PS = pseudoword segmentation; WR = word recognition; SWS = sentence-word segmen-
tation; WSS = word-syllable segmentation; WPS = word-phoneme segmentation; MA = mental
age; SI = speech intelligibility; ED = months of education; SER = standard error of the regression.
*p < .05; **p < .01; ***p < .001
0.78 (t [20] = 5.01, p < .000). Performance on these tasks
was improved dramatically by speech intelligibility.
DISCUSSION
The purpose of this study was to determine if produc-
tive phonological ability, as measured by SI, plays a role
in phonological awareness and beginning reading. We
hypothesized that children with persistent phonological
impairment would show accompanying deficits in phono-
logical awareness and word-recognition ability.
While this study is preliminary, several conclusions are
drawn. First, the data suggest that phonological aware-
ness is closely associated with productive phonological
ability independent of mental age and educational expe-
rience. Children with high SI performed consistently
better than those with low SI on pseudoword, sentence-
word, and word-phoneme segmentation tasks. This find-
ing offers support for the conjecture that phonemic seg-
mentation may depend, at least in part, on primary
linguistic ability (Nesdale, Herriman, & Tunmer, 1984).
Because the regression models explained between one-
third and one-half of the variance in the dependent
variables, we argue that other mediating factors must be
operative as well.
It would be interesting to know whether our finding
relating productive phonological ability and phonological
awareness is matched by equivalent performance in other
aspects of language-for example, productive syntactic/
morphological ability and syntactic/morphological aware-
ness. Kamhi and Koenig (1985) came close with their
finding that children with receptive syntactic/morpholog-
ical delays were deficient on a metalinguistic task that
included syntactic awareness.
A second tentative conclusion is that the impact of
productive phonological ability on word, syllable, and
phoneme segmentation ability is a differential one. As
speech intelligibility increases, we see an accompanying
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WEBSTER & PLANTE: PhonologicalImpairment 181
Dependent Variable
WR SWS WSS WPS
-31.86 -66.02 57.43 -23.63
0.70 1.20 0.03 0.28
0.25* 0.51*** 0.29 0.78***
0.94 1.02 -0.08 -0.27
0.10 0.51 0.00 0.52
24.23 19.29 27.34 21.15
1.79 8.28** 0.69 8.69**
increase in segmentation ability. The greatest propor-
tional increase occurs in word-phoneme segmentation,
followed by pseudoword and sentence-word segmenta-
tion. Although positive as well, the increase for word
recognition (0.25) and word-syllable segmentation (0.29)
is proportionately only about one-half that of pseudoword
segmentation, sentence-word segmentation, and word-
phoneme segmentation. These admittedly preliminary
results may indicate that phonological awareness boot-
straps on the primary or overt phonological system. A
longitudinal research design is, of course, the preferred
way to examine this relationship. Indeed, we currently
are tracking PI children relative to PN children for the
development of phonological awareness.
Third, we conclude that the relationship between pro-
ductive phonological ability and beginning reading abil-
ity is a complex one, mediated by factors other than those
examined here. The lack of significant group differences
in word recognition must be interpreted in view of the
fact that speech intelligibility and single-word recogni-
tion, decidedly limited measures of speech and reading,
were employed in this study.
It is also possible that the PI children may have
employed different strategies for word recognition than
the PN children. Specifically, the former group may have
relied more on a whole-word processing strategy as op-
posed to phonological processing.
Generalization of results is mitigated by several provi-
sos. First, the sample size in this study is small. Future
studies should incorporate larger samples to confirm the
findings of the present study. Second, due to the nature of
the word-recognition task we selected, it was not possible
to determine whether visual or phonological coding strat-
egies were being employed. Future research might incor-
porate the use of experimental reading tasks that allow for
discrimination of coding strategies.
If additional research confirms the finding that phono-
logical impairment deficits are related to phonological
awareness deficits, speech-language pathologists may
 182 Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools
want to routinely screen children with phonological im-
pairment in their caseloads for awareness levels. In turn,
the knowledge that a child with phonological impairment
is not phonologically aware may have bearing on the type
of reading instruction provided.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Portions of this manuscript were presented at the American
Speech-Language-Hearing Association meeting in Seattle,
Washington, November, 1990. This research was supported by a
University of New Hampshire Central University Research
Fund Grant awarded to the first author.
The authors thank Ms. Celeste Bentley for her assistance in
data collection, Dr. L. Michael Couvillion for his assistance in
statistical analysis, and the Nottingham (New Hampshire) Ele-
mentary School for help in subject recruitment.
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Received March 11, 1991
Accepted September 30, 1991
Contact author: Penelope E. Webster, EdD, Department of
Communication Disorders, University of New Hampshire,
Durham, NH 03824-3538.