CAN CHILDREN AND ADULTS FOCUS ON SOUND AS OPPOSED TO SPELLING IN A PHONEME COUNTING TASK

Given the well-established link between phonemic awareness and literac y, it is important to better Is understand the foundations of phonemic awareness. The authors investigated the phoneme counting task, examin ing the degree to which children reading at a first-grade level and co llege students can focus on sound as opposed to spelling. In 2 experim ents, both groups were found to be sensitive to some phonetic details that are not systematically represented in print. They had some abilit y to distinguish between monophthongs (as in he) and diphthongs (as in how), and they tended to count fewer ''sounds'' for syllables ending with the more sonorous (or vowel-like) consonant /r/ than for syllable s ending with less sonorous consonants. However, print-related knowled ge also affected both groups. Even children judged syllables that were the names of letters to contain fewer '' sounds '' than syllables tha t were not letter names.