The Development of Phonological Processes in Reading for Meaning

Abstract

A study examined the importance of two phonological encoding procedures (addressed phonology and assembled phonology) in children who are learning to read and how the relative importance of these two procedures might change over the age range from six to eight. Subjects, 72 fifth, fourth, and third grade students from two inner London (England) primary schools, were asked to pretend to be teachers marking a text for inaccuracies. A later experiment investigated another grade 3 sample of 17 children in another school. Still another experiment retested some of the original subjects, and a fourth experiment used 17 second graders aged six. The sentences were constructed with either exception words (whose correct phonological forms can only be obtained using addressed phonology) or nonwords (whose phonological form must be assembled). Results indicated that both forms of phonological recoding occurred with the older children, but that phonological encoding due to addressed phonology was observed in the younger children. (Three tables of data are included, and 26 references are attached.) (RS)