Exploring a new silent test of phonological awareness

This is the preliminary study of a test of phonological awareness which doe s not require that subjects speak or hear to participate. The test was desi gned to minimize memory loads, and to measure speeded written naming and se gmentation-by-sound. Spelling data can also be collected. Subjects have 45 seconds to name items in each of two sets of line drawings. The average fre quency of the names varies across these sets. In the third set, subjects mu st name the items, and also segment the written names into their constituen t sounds. This task was administered to disabled and normally-reading adult s, with two common tests of phonological awareness. The new test discrimina ted between the readers as reliably as the benchmark tasks, correlating wit h each better than they correlated with each other. The new test was then a dministered to deaf adults, who performed similarly to the disabled (hearin g) readers. The data represent the first direct demonstration of phonologic al abilities in deaf subjects, using a task designed specifically for that purpose.