HESP Seminar: Michelle Erskine (HESP)
Title: Can we predict phonological awareness in children as young as 2 ½-years- old?
Abstract: Phonological awareness provides an important foundation for learning to read.
Children who demonstrate poor phonological awareness skills often experience difficulty learning to read. Previous cross-sectional and longitudinal research has shown that phonological awareness is among the best and most reliable predictors of subsequent reading ability (Bird, Bishop, & Freeman, 1995; Chang, 1995; Wood & Terrell, 1998; Stuart, 1999). However, it is exceedingly difficult to measure phonological awareness in preschool children who are younger than 4-years- old. Using an alternative approach that examines correlates of phonological awareness, this study investigates whether individual differences in measures of vocabulary size, articulation, speech perception, and pseudoword repetition in children as young as 2 ½ to 3 years of age, predict phonological awareness one and two years later. The results of this study suggest that the best predictors of phonological awareness are receptive vocabulary size and pseudoword repetition accuracy. Interpretations and implications of these findings will be further discussed in the seminar.
Bio: Michelle received her MS in Speech Language Pathology from the University of Wisconsin- Madison. Her current research focuses on the relationships among literacy develpment, language development, and phonological acquisition in culturally and linguistically diverse populations. She is also interested in the intersection among language, literacy, and poverty.
