SEGMENTATION DOES PREDICT EARLY PROGRESS IN LEARNING TO READ BETTER THAN RHYME - A REPLY TO BRYANT

In our recent paper (Muter, Hulme, Snowling, & Taylor, 1997) we argued that measures of segmentation were better predictors of early progres s in learning to read than were measures of rhyme. Bryant (1998, this issue), in his comment on our paper, has argued that this conclusion i s flawed because the instructions used in our rhyme detection measure included the phrase ''rhymes with or sounds like.'' We present new dat a showing that the instructions used do not have the effect Bryant cla ims: asking children which word ''rhymes with'' or which word ''rhymes with or sounds like'' a target word produces identical patterns of re sponses. We argue that Bryant's new measure derived from our data simp ly reflects children's global sensitivity to the similarity in sound b etween different words and that this measure provides no convincing su pport for his conclusion that sensitivity to onset and rime is a predi ctor of children's success in learning to read. We conclude that the d ata in our paper, as well as other recent evidence, support the view t hat measures of phonemic segmentation are better predictors of early r eading skills than are measures of onset-rime sensitivity. (C) 1998 Ac ademic Press.