Alphabet Knowledge and Phonological Awareness in Children with Speech Sound Disorder

Considerable evidence has shown that kindergarten measures of phonological awareness and alphabet knowledge are significant predictors of word decoding ability in many typically developing children. Many children with speech sound disorder (SSD) have been found to exhibit poor phonological awareness; however, very few studies have provided a thorough investigation of their knowledge about letter names and letter sounds. The current study was thus designed to examine alphabet knowledge and phonological awareness, and their relationships, in kindergarten children with SSD (n = 16). Alphabet knowledge was assessed by comparing accuracy in naming of all 26 letter names and letter sounds, and was further evaluated to determine differences as a function of letter name category. Two levels of phonological awareness on an elision task (larger vs. smaller units) were compared. Finally, correlations between alphabet knowledge and phonological awareness levels were calculated. Overall, participants knew more letter names than letter sounds, and their letter sound knowledge varied according to letter name categories. Participants exhibited greater accuracy when deleting larger sized units, as compared to smaller units. Furthermore, children whose speech errors were atypical or severely delayed for their age had the lowest scores on the elision task, but performed as well as others on both measures of alphabet knowledge. Outcomes from this study suggest that some children with isolated SSD would have acquired knowledge about letter names and sounds in their kindergarten year, but may encounter difficulty in developing deeper levels of phonological awareness.