Phoneme awareness in children: A function of sonority

This study tested the hypothesis that the sonority of phonemes (a sound's r elative loudness compared to other sounds with the same length, stress, and pitch) influences children's segmentation of syllable constituents. Two gr oups of children, first graders and preschoolers, were assessed for their a wareness of phonemes in coda and onset positions, respectively, using diffe rent phoneme segmentation tasks. Although the trends for the first graders were more robust than the trends for the preschoolers, phoneme segmentation in the two groups correlated with the sonority levels of phonemes, regardl ess of phoneme position or task. These results, consistent with prior studi es of adults, suggest that perceptual properties, such as sonority levels, greatly influence the development of phoneme awareness.