TEACHING PHONOLOGICAL AWARENESS TO YOUNG-CHILDREN WITH LEARNING-DISABILITIES

This study examined the feasibility of teaching phonological manipulat ion skills to preschool children with disabilities. Forty-seven childr en, 4-6 years old, enrolled in a special education preschool, were ran domly assigned to receive training in one of three categories of phono logical tasks (rhyming, blending, and segmenting) ora control group. R esults indicated that children were able to make significant progress in each experimental category, but that they demonstrated little or no generalization either within a category (e.g., from one type of blend ing task to another type of blending task) or between categories (e.g. , from blending to segmenting). Although the children's level of cogni tive development significantly predicted some learning outcomes, it di d not appear to limit the learning of phonological tasks.