Young children's phonological awareness and nonword repetition as a function of vocabulary development

The role of vocabulary growth in the development of two reading-related pho nological processes was examined. In Experiments 1 and 2, 4- and 5-year-old s and a sample of first graders performed better on phonological awareness tasks for word versus pseudoword stimuli, and for highly familiar versus le ss familiar words. Three- and 4-year-olds in Experiment 3 performed better for words with many versus few similarly sounding items in a listener's lex icon. Vocabulary was strongly associated with nonword repetition scores for 3- to 5-year olds. The shared variance of this association was accounted f or by phonological awareness measures and did not appear to be due to phono logical shea-term memory, as previously argued. The author proposes that vo cabulary growth, defined in terms of absolute size, word familiarity, and p honological similarity relations between word items, helps to explain indiv idual differences in emerging phonological awareness and nonword repetition .