EFFECTS OF GRADE, SYLLABLE SEGMENTATION, AND SPEED OF PRESENTATION ONCHILDRENS WORD-BLENDING ABILITY

Subsyllabic awareness was investigated with a word synthesis task. Chi ldren from kindergarten, Ist grade, and 2nd grade attempted to blend a uditorily presented CCVC word segments (where C = consonant and V = vo wel) to produce words. Subsyllabic segmentation and presentation rate of the word segments were varied, and the dependent measure was percen tage correct in each condition. Several posttests were administered to measure the children's preexisting ability to recognize visually pres ented consonants, consonant clusters, rimes, and words. Second graders performed better than 1st graders, who in turn performed better than kindergarteners. Performance of all children was best on words that we re segmented between onset and rime and poorest for words that were se gmented into individual phonemes. Performance for word segments that w ere presented at the fast rate was better than for those presented at the slow rate. The authors suggest that preliterate children are able to manipulate suprasegmental units such as onset and rime, and that th ose units should be emphasized in early reading instruction.