ARTICULATION AND PHONEME AWARENESS OF 3-YEAR-OLD CHILDREN

This report presents findings from the first phase of a longitudinal s tudy examining the development of articulation quality and specific ph oneme awareness during the fourth year of life. Articulation and phone me awareness of /r/ and a central phoneme were assessed for 80 3-year- old children. Children whose articulation of /r/ was accurate for all items were contrasted with those who were accurate on none. The groups differed in their awareness of /r/, after controlling for awareness o f the control phoneme on two of the three phoneme awareness tasks and after controlling for relevant cognitive variables. These findings sup port the hypothesis that accuracy of articulation is related to qualit y of phoneme awareness in young children.