what do children do in the rime-analogy task? an examination of the skills and strategies used by...

What do children do in the rime-analogy task?An examination of the skills and strategies

used by early readers

Lynne Roberts and Sin�ee McDougall*

Department of Psychology, University of Wales Swansea, Swansea SA2 8PP, UK

Received 12 August 2002; revised 19 February 2003

Abstract

Despite the intense debate surrounding the use of orthographic analogy in the clue word

paradigm, little is known about the skills and strategies children actually use and how these

compare with their everyday reading of single words. This study, with 4- and 5-year-olds

(N ¼ 125), supports previous work which suggests children rely on phonological, rather than

orthographic, priming in the clue word task since children most frequently produced rhyming

words in response to the clue word. The extent to which phoneme and rhyme-based skills,

along with letter-sound knowledge, predicted children�s performance in the analogy task

and in a test of single word reading was contrasted and compared. Our findings suggested that

the balance of skills which children drew upon was determined by the demands of the task.

The implications of these findings for the validity of the �orthographic�-analogy task and for

teaching beginning readers is discussed.

� 2003 Elsevier Science (USA). All rights reserved.

Keywords: Reading; Analogy; Phonological skills; Orthographic skills; Letter-sound knowledge; Task

demands

Over the last decade the body of literature that supports the influential role of

phonological awareness in reading development has continued to grow (for re-

views see Kamil, Mosenthal, Pearson, & Barr, 2000; Metsala & Ehri, 1998; Oak-

hill & Beard, 1999). However, despite this growth in research, and agreement

J. Experimental Child Psychology 84 (2003) 310–337

www.elsevier.com/locate/jecp

Journal of

Experimental

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Psychology

* Corresponding author. Fax: +44-1792-295-679.

E-mail address: [email protected] (S. McDougall).

0022-0965/03/$ - see front matter � 2003 Elsevier Science (USA). All rights reserved.

doi:10.1016/S0022-0965(03)00029-8

over the central role of phonological awareness in reading development, disagree-

ment continues over the size of the phonological units and the corresponding ortho-

graphic representations most useful for developing reading skills in beginning

readers (see, for example, Bowey, 2002; Bryant, 2002; Goswami, 2002; Hulme et al.,

2002). Two prominent models of beginning reading suggesting distinct roles for pho-nological awareness were proposed by Ehri (1991, 1998) and Goswami (1993, 1998,

1999). Although they both agree that phonological abilities are essential to reading

development, they differ in the key phonological unit they support and the reading

strategies they propose.

Ehri (1991, 1998) proposed that most beginning readers used a letter recoding

strategy, where the key phonological unit is the phoneme. In this strategy beginning

readers phonologically recode words by translating letters into sounds and then

blending the sounds into words. The findings of Ehri and Robbins (1992) supportedGoswami�s claim that beginning readers found reading unfamiliar words easier if

they were able to use analogies to known words rather than by using phonological

recoding. However, they also showed that the beginning readers needed phonologi-

cal recoding skills to perform analogy reading. Non-readers were not able to read by

analogy because they lacked the necessary decoding knowledge. Ehri (1991, 1998)

therefore suggested that analogy reading was only available to those readers who

had gained experience in letter recoding and were able to store a complete represen-

tation of the rime in memory. Similar views, particularly with respect to the early im-portance of phonemes, have been expressed by a number of other authors (e.g.,

Bruck & Treiman, 1992; Muter & Snowling, 1998; Nation & Hulme, 1997; Seymour,

Duncan, & Bolik, 1999).

In her interactive analogy model, Goswami (1993) suggests that reading develop-

ment could be characterised as a process of increasingly refined orthographic anal-

ogy. Her research, based on the �clue word paradigm,� proposed that when

children first learn to recognise written single syllable words they associate the spell-

ing sequences of the words with the two phonological units, the onset and rhyme.She suggested that as their phonological knowledge improved, children became more

aware of phonemes and graphemes, other than those represented by the onset and

rhyme, and so developed a more sophisticated phonemic representation that enabled

them to make increasingly refined orthographic analogies. Thus Ehri emphasises the

importance of letter-sound knowledge and phonemic decoding in initial reading

whereas Goswami emphasises the role of onset and rhyme, although this is later fol-

lowed by awareness of phonemes. In the ensuing debate resulting from the differ-

ences between these approaches, Goswami pointed out that the reading byanalogy approach does not necessarily exclude the teaching of the alphabet or teach-

ing of phoneme knowledge (Goswami, 1995, 1999). Conversely, others emphasising

the importance of phonemes in early reading, have acknowledged that tuition in

analogy strategies alongside conventional phonics teaching might well be beneficial

(Muter, Snowling, & Taylor, 1994).

The clue word paradigm is a central plank of Goswami�s argument because the

task is used to assess orthographic analogy as a reading strategy. As a result, much

of the debate has focussed on whether children�s performance in the clue word task

L. Roberts, S. McDougall / Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 84 (2003) 310–337 311

really does provide evidence of their use of an orthographic analogy reading strategy

and whether such a strategy is actually available to beginning readers. In this task

children are presented with a clue word and then asked to read a series of other un-

familiar words. The rationale is that if children use orthographic rime analogy, then

they are most likely to read unfamiliar words successfully if they contain the samerime as the clue word (e.g., post is more likely to be read correctly if the clue word

most has been shown to the children). Goswami�s research certainly suggests that

this is the case (Goswami, 1986, 1988, 1990b, 1993). In Goswami�s view the clue

word appears to act as an orthographic memory aid or prompt for beginning read-

ers thus enabling them to use a strategy that would otherwise be unavailable to

them.

A number of doubts, however, have been raised about just what is happening in

the orthographic-analogy task. These are concerned with the extent to which (a) therime, rather than other parts of the clue word, act as an orthographic prompt for

beginning readers, (b) the extent to which children generalise their use of analogy be-

yond the orthographic-analogy task, (c) the extent to which children are primed pho-

nologically, rather than orthographically, by the clue word, and (d) the role which

task demands play in determining the strategies children use in the task. Each of

these concerns will now be examined.

A key issue that has been raised with regard to the efficacy of the orthographic-

analogy task is the extent to which rimes are important as orthographic promptsrather than other parts of the clue word (Bowey, Vaughan, & Hansen, 1998; Nation,

Allen, & Hulme, 2001). Bowey et al. (1998), for example, investigated whether begin-

ning readers could identify unfamiliar words by exploiting orthographic information

from beginning-same (e.g., beak-bean), middle-same (e.g., beak-neat) or end-same

(rime unit; beak-peak) clue words. They found that beginning readers were not reli-

ably better at using orthographic rime analogies than beginning or middle analogies.

Bowey et al. claimed that these findings challenged the idea that analogies were rime

based and argued that children, even when they were beginning to read, were able touse a variety orthographic similarities. Debate about the disparity in findings fo-

cussed on procedural differences between Goswami�s original research and Bowey

et al.�s study. In Goswami�s research clue words had been presented individually

on cards above the test words; however, Bowey produced booklets in which three

clue words were presented in bold type above three test words on each page. Gosw-

ami (1999) argued that procedural changes meant that the task used by Bowey et al.

resulted in something that was fundamentally different for the child. This issue was

resolved by a recent study carried out by Nation et al. (2001) who carried out iden-tical experiments, one using a booklet-type presentation and the other using Gosw-

ami�s individual card presentation. They found that the pattern of results was the

same regardless of the procedure used, showing that procedural changes cannot be

used to explain Bowey�s findings. Research to date therefore suggests that children

will make use of whatever orthographic similarities are available rather than relying

primarily on rime.

The ecological validity of the orthographic-analogy task has been questioned by

Savage (1997), who argued that the prompts available in the clue word paradigm

312 L. Roberts, S. McDougall / Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 84 (2003) 310–337

were not available in naturalistic reading situations and that children�s performance

in the analogy task was unlikely to generalise beyond the test situation. When Bruck

and Treiman (1992) investigated the effect of teaching analogy strategies to begin-

ning readers, they found that the children in their rime-analogy training group

learned words fastest when compared to their middle vowel-analogy training andCV-analogy training groups. However, when the rime-analogy group were tested

without the clue word they failed to remember the words and failed to generalise

their knowledge as well as children in the vowel-training group. Bruck and Treiman

suggested that this was because the children in the analogy group �may have focused

more on the process of pronouncing the words by analogy� (our italics). By focusing

more on rhyme sounds they made a rhyme analogy rather than focusing on the

orthographic rime unit in the words and making a rime analogy.

This leads us to a further key issue with this task, that is, whether children respondto the phonology of the clue word, rather than its orthography, and are phonologi-

cally, rather than orthographically, primed in their subsequent reading. Goswami

conducted her own investigation into the likelihood of performance in the clue word

task being an epiphenomenon due to phonological priming over a decade ago

(Goswami, 1990a). She concluded from her investigation that the 20 children in-

cluded in the study ‘‘did not show evidence of guessing rhymes.’’ However, it is in-

teresting to note that she excluded the results of four further children who used a

‘‘blanket strategy of guessing rhyming responses’’ because they chose to pronounceall the test words to rhyme with the clue word. Her analysis may therefore have un-

derestimated children�s tendency to use rhyme responses.

Even though Goswami acknowledged that she found transfer in her phonological

prime condition, where same-sound words with different orthography to the clue

word were pronounced to rhyme with the clue word (e.g., toast from a clue word

most), she argued that this was not sufficient to suggest analogy was solely attribut-

able to phonological priming. She suggested that ‘‘If the effects of analogy are

wholly attributable to phonological priming then children should show equal im-provement in reading the Phonological Primes, which share phonology with the clue

words, as the Analogous words, which share both phonology and orthography with

the clue words’’ (p. 328). In other words, Goswami suggested that if children showed

equal improvement in reading, for example, toast from a clue word most as reading

post from the clue word most, then the effects of analogy were wholly attributable to

phonological priming. It remains an open question as to whether this might have

been the case for her own study had she not omitted four of the children from

her analysis.A number of recent studies have suggested that the use of phonological priming in

the analogy task is more widespread than Goswami suggests. One of the most con-

clusive studies was conducted by Nation et al. (2001). They examined the role of

phonological priming explicitly by introducing a phonological prompt condition,

in which there was no orthography available for the child to use (see also Savage,

1997; Savage & Stuart, 1998). They found that �analogy� or rhyming responses were

made equally to words that overlapped orthographically with the clue word (e.g.,

bone-cone) and to words that overlapped phonologically (e.g., bone-moan), irrespec-


tive of whether children were given the original orthographic prompt or only a pho-

nological prompt. On the basis of these findings, they argued that there was little ev-

idence to suggest that beginning readers were making orthographic analogies in this

task and that performance could be just as easily explained by suggesting that chil-

dren use the phonological similarities with the clue word to produce responses in thistask.

Finally, a recent study carried out by Brown and Deavers (1999) suggests that

children�s tendency to use phonological priming or orthographic analogy may de-

pend critically on task demands. They showed that the children made more analogy

responses in the single target task (e.g., clue word: craft; target non-word: paft) than

in the multiple target tasks where the clue word was less salient (e.g., clue word:

craft; target non-words: paft, crand, frack, vime). They also found that young read-

ers made use of both rime level and grapheme level correspondences in non-wordreading. These findings suggest not only that children can respond flexibly to

the task demands presented by the analogy task but also that they may use

more than one strategy, employing either rhyme or phoneme level skills, to arrive

at a response.

To summarise, research to date has raised considerable doubts about the extent to

which beginning reader�s performance in the orthographic-analogy task reflects the

use of rime analogies and whether children can generalise their knowledge of analogy

beyond the confines of the task into reading. Furthermore, there is now evidence thatchildren are sensitive to the demands of the task and, depending on the degree of

phonological priming, may see producing rhymes as an appropriate strategy. Despite

the assumption that children tend to use rhyme in response to phonological priming,

with the exception of Goswami�s (1990a) study, there is no data available about the

frequency with which children use rhyme. It may be, for example, that children use

rhyme in response to analogous words (i.e., post given most as a clue word) and

same-sound words (most-toast) but not in response to ambiguous words (cost given

most as a clue word). If this were the case, children would be responding flexibly tothe phonological primes they have been given (as Brown and Deavers suggest) but

could not be said to be using a �blanket rhyme strategy.� The frequency with which

children used rhyme responses was noted in this study in order to find out the exact

extent to which rhyme was used as a response and whether frequency of use varied

between conditions.

The intense research interest regarding the clue word task has tended to obscure

the original issue about the extent to which children use rime analogies in reading

and whether the skills they bring to bear in the rime-analogy task are similar tothose which they employ in reading. For example, although Nation et al. (2001)

conclude that the clue word task has very little relevance to the processes involved

in young children�s reading development, they provide little information about the

reading skills, if any, that children bring to bear in their performance on the anal-

ogy task. One aim of our study was therefore to explore the extent to which chil-

dren�s phonological skills and letter-sound knowledge predicted their performance

in the analogy task and to compare this with the roles which these skills have in

their reading.


A number of roles for rhyme skills, phoneme skills, and letter-sound knowledge

are possible. The first is that awareness of rhyme is of primary importance in reading

and in the analogy task. Although Goswami (1995) has suggested that the analogy

approach to reading did not exclude the teaching of the alphabet, its letters or their

sounds, the significance of alphabetic knowledge in the analogy strategy is not clear.Alphabetic knowledge appears essential for reading an unknown word using an anal-

ogy strategy, because the onset and rime of the clue word must be initially recognised

and segmented; the original onset must be replaced with that of the unknown target

word and the new onset and rime re-blended to pronounce the target word. How-

ever, Goswami suggests that �learning about onsets and rimes will help put the alpha-

betic key into the child�s pocket, instead of leaving the child to excavate the key from

beneath the sometimes confusing mat of traditional phonics� (p. 144; see also Chew,

1994). Although she acknowledges the need for the child to have �the alphabetic key�in their pocket, somehow she seems to infer that learning about onset and rhyme as-

sists the alphabetic process in a way that learning about grapheme–phoneme corre-

spondences does not. The second possibility, if Ehri and others are correct, is that we

might expect letter-sound knowledge and grapheme–phoneme correspondence skills

to be important, because children would need the alphabetic key to open the door-

way to the house of reading development. There are two further possibilities. One is

that, as Brown and Deavers (1999) suggest, both rhyme and phoneme skills are

brought to bear in reading words by analogy. The final possibility is that childrenare so overpowered by the task demands of the clue word paradigm that they only

use a basic �rhyme similarity� strategy (i.e., phonological priming) rather than utilis-

ing an orthographic-analogy reading strategy. Each of these possibilities was exam-

ined in the present study.

To examine children�s use of phonological priming directly, the frequency with

which children used rhyme responses to clue words in the analogy task was measured

along with their letter-sound knowledge and awareness of, and ability to manipulate,

rhymes and phonemes. For both phonological units, children were assessed on theirimplicit awareness, their ability to produce and discriminate between units, and their

ability to segment and blend. Because children carried out similar tasks for both

rhymes and phonemes, it was possible to evaluate the extent to which performance

in the analogy task and reading was determined by skill with a particular phonolog-

ical unit (i.e., rhymes or phonemes) and whether the level of task complexity was also

an important factor. For example, it may be that it is children�s ability to segment

and blend, as much as their skills with phonemes or rhymes, which is important in

the analogy task. This possibility was explored in the present study.In the present study the clue word task closely followed Goswami�s (1990a) own

procedure and used three different word types. In one condition, test words were anal-

ogous to the clue word, sharing both orthography and phonology (e.g., using the clue

word most to read the analogous word post). In another, the test word was ambiguous

with respect to the clue word, sharing orthography but not phonology (e.g., using the

clue word most to read the ambiguous word cost). Finally, children were tested us-

ing the phonological prime that shared the same phonology, but not orthography,

as the clue word (e.g., using the clue word most to read the same-sound word toast).


A rhyming response in the analogy test, provided the onset had been correctly

identified, would provide a phonologically correct response for analogous and

same-sound words but not for ambiguous words. Because the assumption made

by Goswami and others in the orthographic-analogy test is that a new word would

be generated from its orthographic cues, there is no reason to expect same-soundwords, with different orthography to the clue word, to produce a rhyming response.

The use of a rhyming pronunciation could, therefore, provide insight into the strat-

egy being employed by the children in the orthographic-analogy test. If they were

simply using a rhyme strategy, irrespective of the type of word presented, then all

types of words would show similar levels of rhyme use.

Method

Participants

One hundred and twenty five children, 4- and 5-year-olds (59 boys and 66 girls),

from four primary schools in the Llanelli area of South Wales, participated in this

study (MðageÞ ¼ 5 years 5 months, SD ¼ 3 months, Range¼ 4 years 10 months to

5 years 11 months). The reading ages of children in the sample varied from 5 years

to 7 years 3 months (M ¼ 5 years 5 months, SD ¼ 7 months; assessed using the Brit-ish Ability Scales Word Reading Test; Elliot, Smith, & McUlloch, 1996). Reading

ages represented the ability to read between 0 and 41 words in the Word Reading

Test. The children�s receptive vocabulary varied around the population mean

(M ¼ 102:16, SD ¼ 11:36, Range¼ 81 to 130; assessed using the British Picture Vo-

cabulary Scale; Dunn, Dunn, Whetton, & Burley, 1997).

All the children were following the UK National Literacy Strategy. This approach

teaches children to use a variety of strategies to learn to read words by sight, to use

phonics (linked to phonological awareness training) to attempt to read unknownwords, and to use contextual cues when reading text.

Materials and procedure

The tasks reported in this study were obtained as part of a larger longitudinal

study into the roles of phonological awareness and letter-sound knowledge in

learning to read. Only those tasks directly relevant to our exploration of reading

by analogy are detailed below. All children were tested individually in a quiet areaaway from the classroom. All completed the full battery of tests, in pseudo-ran-

dom order, over a series of 20-min sessions. For the phonological tasks, all the syl-

lable tasks were presented to each individual on one day, all rhyme tasks were

presented on another day and all phoneme tasks on yet another. The days on

which syllable, rhyme, and phoneme tasks were presented was randomised and

the order of presentation of tasks on any given day was also randomised. Other

tasks in the battery were simply presented in random order over the series of test

sessions.


Orthographic-analogy task

The analogy task used in this investigation was based on Goswami�s (1990a) Ex-periment 1 and used six different sets of words. The items in each set consisted of 4

four-letter words, that is, the clue word and the three different types of target words.The target words were:

(i) Analogous words: these words rhymed with the clue word and shared the same

orthographic rime unit. Use of analogy resulted in a correct response (e.g., most–

post). It is important to note that, given the nature of the target word, a correct

response could result from the use of orthographic analogy or simply from iden-

tifying the initial letter sound and adding the rhyme (i.e., ‘‘p’’–�ost’’).(ii) Ambiguous words: these words shared the orthographic rime of the clue word

but not its pronunciation, use of analogy resulted in an incorrect response (e.g.,most–cost).

(iii) Same-sound words: these words rhymed with the clue word but did not share

the same orthographic rime unit, use of a rhyming pronunciation resulted in a

correct response (e.g., most–toast).

Allwords used in this experimentwere printed individually on cards andwere drawn

fromawider set used byGoswami (1990a); seeAppendixA. In a pre-test session, the 24

test words were presented individually to each child, in random order for them to read.

The pre-test session produced a baseline against which to compare the reading of thetargetwords in the second experimental session.On the following day the childrenwere

told that the clue word might help them to read some of the new words they were to be

shown. The clue word was printed on a single card, as were the test words, and re-

mained visible during the analogy test. The clue word was read aloud for the child if

necessary and then each test word was placed one by one in random order below the

clue word for the child to read. Each target word card was removed after an attempt

had been made to read it, so that only the clue word and one target word was visible

at any one time. One training example was used for each child. Each child was givenseveral seconds to respond to each word and was encouraged to attempt every item.

Letter-sound knowledge tasks

Letter-sound knowledge was assessed by asking the children to name and write

letters.

Alphabet identification task

Each child was asked to provide the name, or the sound, of all the letters from the

alphabet when presented individually and in random order, on cards in lower case.

Each letter correctly identified by name or letter sound scored one point.

Letter writing task

Each child was asked to write 12 randomly chosen letters from the alphabet when

given the letter name and its sound. Either upper or lower case letters were accepted

as correct.


Rhyme awareness tasks

Each child�s phonological awareness was assessed at the rhyme and phoneme level

by a series of tasks outlined below. All materials for the rhyme tasks are shown in

Appendix B.

First rhyme level—Implicit awareness

Two tasks were designed to test childrens� awareness of similar rhyme sound pat-

terns in words. The first task was modelled on a task of implicit rhyme awareness

reported by Rappaport (1993). Children were required to complete sentences such

as ‘‘Jack and Jill went up the . . .’’ or ‘‘Down, down fell the . . .’’ by choosing one

of four pictures in response (i.e., pictures of a hill, stairs, lane, or ladder in the first

instance and pictures of a ball, clown, boy or girl to complete the second sentence). Itis important to note that all of the distractor responses in this task were semantically

plausible, so simply choosing a semantically plausible picture was no guarantee of

success. This task is thought to test implicit rhyme awareness because children

may express a preference for �clown� in the second example without being explicitly

aware of why they preferred the word. Children may therefore be implicitly aware of

rhyme sound patterns and this will be evident in their choices for sentence endings.

The second task involved deciding whether or not three words rhymed and was

based on the rhyme detection task reported by Stuart and Coltheart (1988). Each childwas shown a set of three pictures, which they were asked to name. The names of the

itemswere then repeated by the first author, who then said, ‘‘Do they all sound the same

at the end; do they rhyme?’’ Children were presented with two sets of pictures to famil-

iarise themwith the task, followed by a further eight sets. Again it was felt that children

could successfully complete this task without explicit awareness of rhyme; all that was

required was the children recognised similar sound patterns at the end of words.

An implicit rhyme awareness score was derived from the sum of the correct items

scored on both tasks.

Second rhyme level—Production and discrimination

At the second level of difficulty children were either asked to supply rhymes for

words or to compare and contrast the rhyme unit in words. All four tasks therefore

required an explicit awareness of rhyme. Again, the sum of the scores on each task

provided an overall score of rhyme production and discrimination.

Rhyme supply task. In this task the children played a game with a hand puppet

called �Crazy Coyote.� The child acted as a ventriloquist and spoke for Coyote. A se-ries of pictures were presented and the first author began the word naming the ob-

ject, and the child helped Coyote by completing the word by supplying the rhyme

ending. For example, when a picture of a �gate� was presented, the first author startedthe picture name with a /g/ sound and the child was expected to supply the final

rhyme segment ‘-ate’ for Coyote.Rhyme production task. This task was developed from the rhyme production task

reported by Stuart and Coltheart (1988). Children were asked whether they knew

that if two words made the same sound at the end, they sounded like a rhyme. If they


understood how to make a rhyme they were invited to help Coyote make some

rhyming words. For example, a picture of a �tap� was identified and the child made

rhyming words such as �map� and �clap.� Children were awarded a score for every cor-

rect rhyming response they produced.

‘Odd man out’ task. The third task was an �odd man out� task similar to that usedby Bradley and Bryant (1983). Each child was shown a series of three picture cards

and each card was named. The child was then asked to choose the one which ‘‘does

not rhyme because it sounds different at the end, it is the odd one out’’ (e.g., jug, lock,

mug; lips, chips, wig).

Rhyme matching task. The fourth task was similar to the rhyme detection task

used by Muter, Hulme, Snowling, and Taylor (1997). It involved matching a target

word to one of the three possible rhyming words (e.g., an appropriate match for �jug�had to be found from lock, mug, pig). Each child was shown four picture cards andeach card was named. The child was then asked to identify the word that sounded

the same at the end and made a rhyme with the target word.

Third rhyme level—Onset and rhyme manipulation

This third level of difficulty focuses on the child�s ability to blend and segment at

the onset and rhyme level, with these tasks requiring different abilities to those of

rhyme discrimination and production. The tasks used similar procedures to that re-

ported by Hatcher (1996) for phoneme segmentation and blending tasks. In thesetasks each child was invited to play a card game with �Crazy Coyote,� the hand pup-

pet, that involved segmenting or blending the onset and rhyme in various words.

Again, the sum of the scores on each task formed the third level of rhyme awareness,

segmenting and blending onset and rhyme.

Segmenting words into onset and rhyme. In this task each child was asked to help

Coyote to break up a word into the sounds at its beginning and ending. Each child

was asked to name the picture on the card. When they had correctly identified the

picture the first author said ‘‘Now let�s play this game with Coyote, will you makea voice for him because he can�t speak? I want you to be the teacher and to say

the beginning of the word and then you can finish it for Coyote, in his funny voice.’’

For example, when a picture of a �pig� was presented, the child started the picture

name with a /p/ sound and then was expected to supply the final rhyme segment,

�-ig� for Coyote, in a funny voice.

Blending onset and rhyme into words. In this task Coyote told the child in his �dis-jointed� voice the name of a picture on the card. For example, Coyote said, (while

holding a picture of a �doll� out of view of the child) /d/ followed by a 1-s delayand then �-oll.� If the child could guess the word correctly by listening carefully

and blending the onset and rhyme together to produce the word, they responded

�doll� and won the picture card from Coyote.

Phoneme awareness tasks

As for the rhyme awareness tasks, the phoneme-based tasks were designed to

test children�s ability to (a) identify initial phonemes, (b) discriminate between


and produce phonemes, and (c) segment, blend, and manipulate phonemes. Similar

tasks have been used at the rhyme and phoneme level, wherever possible, in order

to ensure comparability between tasks (see Bryant, 1998). Where identical materi-

als were used the tasks were always administered in separate testing sessions to

avoid practice effects. All of the materials for the phoneme awareness tasks areshown in Appendix C.

First phoneme level—Implicit awareness

The initial phoneme awareness task involved deciding whether or not three words

began with the same sound (after Stuart & Coltheart, 1988). Each child was shown a

set of three pictures, which they were asked to name. They were then asked whether

the words all began with the same sound. This task is similar to the second implicit

rhyme task. If children were able to respond correctly to words which all began withthe same phoneme, they were then asked if they knew what sound the words began

with. The score for this task was the sum of the number of correct responses to the

first and second questions.

Second phoneme level—Production and discrimination

At this second level of difficulty children were required to focus on either the initial

or the final phoneme in each word. The sum of the scores on each of the six tasks at this

level provided a measure of children�s phoneme discrimination and production.Supply final phoneme. In this task, based on the task reported by Stuart and Colt-

heart (1988), the child was shown a picture card and asked to identify the object on

the card. The first author then said, ‘‘I shall say the word again and you must listen

carefully. Now you can help Coyote, tell him the last sound you hear in the word.

For example, for �cot� the last sound is /t/.’’

Phoneme production. Each child was invited to join Coyote in a game of �I spy� inthis phoneme production task. Each child was asked to say the sound of the letter on

each letter card chosen by Coyote. If they could not identify the letter sound, thiswas noted and the first author provided the letter sound. Once the letter sound

had been identified the child was asked to give Coyote two words, real or �pretend,�that began with the chosen letter. For example, for the letter sound /b/, appropriate

response�s were �book, boy.�‘Odd man out’ task—Initial and final phonemes. These tasks were similar to the

�odd-man-out� tasks used at rhyme level; however, this time it was the initial and final

phoneme of the word that required discrimination. Each child was shown a series of

three picture cards and each card was named. The child was then asked to choose theone that ‘‘had a different sound at the beginning/end, to the other two words—which

word was the odd one out?’’ (e.g., �cow, card, girl� for initial phonemes and �tick, dog,

lock� for final phonemes).

Matching task—Initial and final phonemes. These phoneme-matching tasks were

developed from the rhyme-matching task reported by Muter et al. (1997). They in-

volved matching the initial/final phoneme of a target word to the initial/final pho-

neme of one of three possible stimuli words (e.g., an appropriate match for �cow�had to be found from �card, girl, chest� for initial phonemes and an appropriate


match for �tick� had to be found from �dog, lock, egg� for final phonemes). Each child

was shown four picture cards and each card was named. The child was then asked to

identify the word that began or ended with the same sound as the target picture card,

that is, which word matched the target word.

Third phoneme level—Phoneme manipulation

Segmenting and blending phonemes. The segmenting and blending tasks essentially

followed the same procedure as those used at the rhyme level, the only difference be-

ing that the children were asked to segment and blend phonemes rather than onsets

and rhymes.

In the segmenting task each child was asked to listen carefully to a word and then

to segment the word into its phonemes. Again, the children were asked to help Crazy

Coyote to segment the names of objects shown in a series of pictures. For example,on presenting the child with a picture of a �cot� the child broke up the word into the

sounds /c/ /o/ /t/ for Coyote, in a funny voice.

In the blending task each child was asked to help Coyote blend a series of pho-

nemes to produce a word. For example, Coyote (i.e., the first author) said (holding

a picture of a �cat� out of view of the child) /c/ followed by a 1-s delay and then /a/

followed by another 1 second delay and then /t/. If the child could guess the word

correctly by listening carefully and blending the phonemes together to produce the

word, they responded �cat� and won the picture card from Coyote.Phoneme deletion tasks. The phoneme deletion tasks were developed from the task

used by Rosner and Simon (1971). Children were asked to delete the initial, medial,

or final phonemes of words. When deleting initial phonemes, the child was presented

with a picture card representing the stimulus word and this was used as a memory

aid during the test. Children were asked to ‘‘Look at the picture and listen carefully

to the word. Now I want you to say it again, but do not say the beginning sound in

the word. Tell me the new word that you have made. For example, say �cake.� Now

say it again, but do not say the /c/ sound. The new word is �ache�.’’ The same prin-ciple was used for final phoneme. For example, ‘‘Say �train.� Now say it again, but do

not say the /n/ sound.’’ Similarly an item for medial phonemes was ‘‘Say �trail.� Now

say it again, but do not say the /r/ sound.’’

Addition of initial, final, and medial phonemes. In this task the child was required

to create a new word by adding a phoneme to the chosen word. The added phoneme

was placed either as the initial, final, or medial phoneme, with two test items for each

position. The first author said to the child, ‘‘Look at this picture and listen carefully

to the word. Now I shall ask you to add a sound to the word to make a new word.For example, say �rake.� Now say it again, but add a /b/ sound to the beginning of

�rake.� The new word is �brake�.’’

Results

Initial analyses examine children�s performance in the analogy task and the ex-

tent to which rhyme responses were used. This is followed by correlation and


regression analyses which examine the role which phonological skills and letter-

sound knowledge have in determining performance in the analogy task and in

single word reading.

Number of correct words read by analogy

Table 1 shows the number of target words that children were able to read prior

to the analogy reading task. It is clear that only a very small number of these

words could be read by the children taking part in the study. Adjusted analogy

reading scores, which accounted for children�s pre-test knowledge, were calculated

for each type of word. Table 1 shows that whereas children did relatively well on

analogous and same-sound words (which both required a rhyming response) they

did very poorly on ambiguous words (for which a rhyming response was incor-rect). A one-way repeated measures analysis of variance was performed on these

adjusted scores to examine differences in performance between different types of

word (analogous, ambiguous, and same-sound words). The effect of word type

was highly significant, F ð2; 238Þ ¼ 91:01; MSE ¼ 1:62; p < :001. Planned compar-

isons revealed significant differences between analogous and same-sound word

scores, F ð1; 124Þ ¼ 5:41; MSE ¼ 1:16; p < :05, and between analogous and am-

biguous scores, F ð1; 123Þ ¼ 112:49; MSE ¼ 3:44; p < :001. Because same-sound

words produced even better analogy performance than analogous words, this find-ing strongly suggests that children rely on phonological, rather than orthographic,

similarity when carrying out the analogy reading task. It is important to note that

although the performance on analogous and same-sound words differed signifi-

cantly, the effect size for differences between analogous and same-sound words

ðg2p ¼ :04Þ was much smaller than for differences between analogous and ambigu-

ous words ðg2p ¼ :48Þ.

Frequency of use of rhyming pronunciations in the analogy task

The extent to which children in the sample used rhyme, rather than rime, in the

analogy task was examined further by exploring the frequency with which they pro-

duced rhyming responses to words (see Table 1). A rhyming response in the analogy

test, provided the onset had been correctly identified, would provide a phonologi-

Table 1

Reading pre-test, adjusted analogy scores, and frequency of rhyme use in the analogy task

Type of word

Analogous word Ambiguous word Same-sound word

Reading pre-test 0.06 (0.55) 0.13 (0.61) 0.07 (0.57)

Adjusted analogy scores 1.82 (1.83) 0.06 (0.35) 2.05 (2.25)

Frequency of rhyme use 3.44 (2.43) 3.12 (2.49) 3.33 (2.53)

Note. Standard deviations in parentheses.


cally correct response for analogous and same-sound words but not for ambiguous

words. Rhyming responses were not always correct since children could produce

rhymes which had the wrong onset (e.g., given the clue word most and shown post,

children might respond with ‘‘host’’ or ‘‘boast’’). Finally, rhyming responses to am-

biguous words were, by definition, incorrect (e.g., responding ‘‘coast’’ when givenmost as a clue word and shown cost to read). Overall children used rhyme 55% of

the time. Of the rhyming responses observed, 64% were correct. Other non-rhyming

responses were simply word guesses that did not rhyme. Although on a very few oc-

casions children produced rhyming non-words as responses, almost all responses

were other rhyming words. Children were unable to provide a response on only

11% of occasions.

Table 1 shows that high levels of rhyming responses appear to be used across all

word types. This helps to explain the pattern of findings for analogy reading, sug-gesting that children did poorly on ambiguous words because they were often pro-

ducing an inappropriate rhyming response. An analysis of variance revealed a

significant effect of word type, F ð2; 248Þ ¼ 4:92; MSE ¼ 0:67; p < :01. Planned

comparisons showed that there were significant differences between analogous and

ambiguous words, F ð1; 124Þ ¼ 8:13; MSE ¼ 1:57; p < :01, but not between analo-

gous and same-sound words, F ð1; 123Þ ¼ 1:97; MSE ¼ 0:79; p > :05. Thus, the fre-

quency of rhyming responses was equal for both analogous and same-sound words,

again providing strong evidence in favour of phonological, rather than orthographic,priming. It is worth noting that although the frequency with which rhyme was used

for analogous and ambiguous words differed significantly, the effect size was very

small ðg2p ¼ :06Þ.

Letter-sound knowledge and phonological awareness

Although there was considerable variation in the sample, children appeared to

have a good, but growing, knowledge of the alphabet (M ¼ 78:18%, SD ¼23:37%). Children�s letter writing had also progressed to a point where, on average,

children were able to write well over half of the alphabet (M ¼ 65:67%,

SD ¼ 27:85%).

Table 2 shows the phonological awareness scores achieved at each level of difficulty

for rhymes and phonemes. These are shown as percentages so that comparisons can

be made across tests with differing numbers of items. An analysis of variance was car-

ried out on these data to examine the effect of type of phonological unit (rhymes vs

Table 2

Mean scores in percentages (and standard deviations) in the phonological awareness tasks

Type of task Rhyme awareness Phoneme awareness

Implicit awareness 72.86 (18.00) 64.33 (26.95)

Production and discrimination 51.74 (27.65) 53.60 (21.44)

Segmentation and blending 49.10 (27.83) 25.65 (19.52)

Total score 55.82 (21.78) 38.11 (19.02)


phonemes) and task difficulty (implicit/production and discrimination/ segmentation

and blending) on children�s performance. The nature of the phonological unit and

task difficulty both significantly affected performance, F ð1; 124Þ ¼ 56:92; MSE ¼332:03; p < :001, and F ð2; 248Þ ¼ 237:24; MSE ¼ 256:83; p < :001, respectively.

There was also a significant interaction between these two effects, F ð2; 248Þ ¼42:05; MSE ¼ 240:48; p < :001. Simple main effects analyses revealed that implicit

rhyme awareness was better than implicit phoneme awareness, F ð1; 124Þ ¼12:20; MSE ¼ 372:51; p < :01, and segmentation and blending of rhymes was better

than for phonemes, F ð1; 124Þ ¼ 211:82; MSE ¼ 162:21; p < :001, but there was no

difference between rhymes and phonemes for the production and discrimination

tasks, F < 1 (see Table 1). Again, it is important to note effect sizes for the simple

main effects; these were moderate in size for differences between rhyme and phoneme

segmentation and blending ðg2p ¼ :63Þ but were very small for differences between the

implicit awareness tasks ðg2p ¼ :09Þ.

Predicting performance in orthographic analogy and single word reading: Correlation

and regression analyses

A series of fixed-order stepwise regression analyses were carried out to examine

the extent to which phonological skills and letter-sound knowledge predicted perfor-

mance in the orthographic-analogy task and the BAS word reading test. The aim ofthese analyses was to explore the extent to which predictors of the orthographic-

analogy task (where one might expect more use of rhyme awareness) were the same

as the skills predicting single word reading (where the different task demands might

reduce the importance of rhyme).

Correlations. Before the regression analyses were carried out, correlations between

variables were examined to explore predictors of performance in the analogy task

and single word reading. The raw score of the BAS reading test and the adjustedscore for the orthographic-analogy test were used in these analyses (i.e., scores on

the test after they had been adjusted for children�s pre-test knowledge). Table 3

shows the resulting correlation matrix. Correlations of phonological awareness

and letter-sound knowledge with performance in the orthographic-analogy task

and in single word reading were generally high. However, correlations between read-

ing tasks and implicit rhyme awareness were much lower. With the exception of the

correlation between implicit phoneme awareness and BAS reading, correlations with

phoneme skills at all levels were higher than for rhyme skills. This pattern of corre-lations contrasts with what might be expected if children are using rime-based anal-

ogy for the orthographic-analogy task.

Given the lower correlations for the implicit phonological tasks, the significance

of the differences between correlations were examined using Fisher�s zr transforma-

tion before deciding which scores should be entered into the regression. For the anal-

ogy task, implicit rhyme differed from the rhyme production and manipulation

correlations and for the BAS word reading test, both implicit rhyme awareness

and implicit phoneme awareness correlations differed from those with production


and manipulation. When total scores were calculated for rhyme and phoneme skills,

these implicit awareness tasks were omitted because their relationship with the read-

ing tasks appeared to differ.

Regression analyses. Two series of fixed-order regressions focused on the relative

role of rhyme awareness, phoneme awareness, and letter-sound knowledge. As noted

earlier, there is considerable variation in scores on all of these tasks. Although some

of the more able children were reaching ceiling on the alphabet identification task,when the group is considered as a whole, this effect is less apparent. The first series

examined the predictive role of these skills in the orthographic-analogy task and a

second identical series was carried out to examine predictors of single word reading

in the BAS word reading test (see Table 4). Six analyses were carried out in each se-

ries of regressions, in which the order of the variables was systematically varied. This

made it possible to examine the relative contributions made by each skill in predict-

ing performance. Of particular interest was the possibility that children would rely

on rhyme awareness more in the analogy task (because task demands appear to pro-mote a rhyme-based strategy).

Orthographic-analogy task. It is clear from Analyses 1 and 2 that rhyme is an

effective predictor of performance in the analogy task. However, both phoneme

Table 3

Correlations between reading tasks, phonological skills, and letter-sound knowledge

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

1. Orthographic-

analogy task

—

2. BAS word

reading test

.65�� —

Rhyme awareness

3. Implicit awareness .23�� .22� —

4. Production and

discrimination

.50�� .39�� .63�� —

5. Manipulation .59�� .50�� .30�� .58�� —

6. Total score .57�� .46�� .69�� .95�� .78�� —

Phoneme awareness

7. Implicit awareness .54�� .31�� .32�� .40�� .59�� .52�� —

8. Production and

discrimination

.65�� .53�� .38�� .56�� .68�� .67�� .69�� —

9. Manipulation .64�� .66�� .39�� .61�� .77�� .73�� .60�� .76�� –

10. Total score .69�� .63�� .41�� .62�� .78�� .75�� .74�� .91�� .96�� —

Letter-sound knowledge

11. Alphabet

identification

.61�� .52�� .26�� .35�� .53�� .46�� .55�� .65�� .57�� .65�� —

12. Letter writing .65�� .58�� .20�� .39�� .55�� .48�� .52�� .66�� .61�� .68�� .83�� —

*Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level.** Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level.


skills and letter-sound knowledge predict significant amounts of the variance when

entered into the analyses after rhyme awareness. In contrast, when rhyme skills are

entered into the analysis after phoneme skills, they no longer contribute to predict-

ing variance in analogy task performance (Analysis 3). Letter-sound knowledge,

however, does contribute unique variance over and above phoneme skills (Analy-ses 3 and 4). Both phoneme skills and letter-sound knowledge are extremely pow-

erful predictors of orthographic-analogy performance, explaining over 40% of the

observed variance when entered first into the analyses (Analyses 3 and 4; 5 and 6).

Taken together these findings suggest that a combination of phoneme-based and

letter knowledge tasks would be optimal in predicting analogy task performance.

Although rhyme is a good predictor of performance in this task, it is not as pow-

erful as phoneme skills and letter knowledge. This finding contradicts Goswami�sproposal that rhyme-based skills are the key determinant of performance in thistask.

BAS word reading test. The importance of rhyme in determining performance di-

minished when performance on a standard single word reading test was considered.

Although a significant predictor of performance when entered first into the analyses,

it predicted only 22.90% of the variance observed in the BAS word reading task, in

comparison to 35.60% for the orthographic-analogy task (see the first analyses in

Table 4). Phoneme skills still predict over 40% of the variance, suggesting that theseskills are equally important in both reading tasks. Although the role of letter knowl-

edge in predicting performance was somewhat diminished when compared with the

analogy task (see Analyses 5 and 6), it still predicted a small but significant amount

of the variance observed even when entered into the analysis after phoneme skills

(see Analysis 4).

When considered together, the findings from both analyses suggest that although

rhyme-based skills appear to be more important in determining performance in anal-

ogy reading, phoneme skills combined with letter-sound knowledge act as the pri-mary determinants of performance.

Discussion

Phonological priming in the analogy task

A number of studies have been carried out to examine the extent to which per-formance in the analogy task is an effective measure of children�s use of rime-

based orthographic analogies in reading (Bowey et al., 1998; Goswami, 1990a;

Nation et al., 2001; Savage, 1997; Savage & Stuart, 1998). One of the main issues

with respect to the efficacy of this test is the extent to which children read words

using rime-based orthographic cues or simply pronounce words using rhyme anal-

ogy. Although there is now considerable evidence that children tend to respond

using phonological priming from the clue word (Nation et al., 2001; Savage,

1997; Savage & Stuart, 1998), only limited evidence is available about the extent


to which children use rhyme as a response (Goswami, 1990a) and the analysis

and interpretation of Goswami�s evidence is somewhat equivocal.

Our data shows that rhyming responses were equally frequent for both ortho-

graphically similar analogous words and phonologically similar same-sound

words. This provides further support for the argument that children use a pho-

nological rhyming strategy in the clue word task (i.e., phonological priming),

rather than successfully identifying the written rime unit to utilise an ortho-

graphic rime strategy. Children made at least equal improvement in readingthe same-sound words which shared phonology, but not orthography, with the

clue word. This meets Goswami�s (1990a) own criteria for establishing phonolog-

ical priming. Given Goswami�s (1990a, 1990b) methodological reservations about

a number of previous studies (e.g. Bowey et al., 1998; Savage, 1997, but see also

Table 4

Fixed-order stepwise regression analyses for whole group: The role of rhyme and phoneme awareness and

letter-sound knowledge in predicting performance in the orthographic-analogy task and single word read-

ing

Steps Predictor

variables

Orthographic-analogy task BAS word reading task

% variance

explained

F value p value % variance

explained

F value p value

Analysis 1 Analysis 1

1 Rhyme 35.60 68.10 .000 22.90 36.61 .000

2 Letters 16.50 42.20 .000 13.18 26.60 .000

3 Phoneme 2.90 7.71 .006 8.40 18.55 .000


1 Rhyme 35.60 68.10 .000 22.90 36.61 .000

2 Phoneme 13.20 31.52 .000 19.50 41.35 .000

3 Letters 6.20 16.66 .000 2.70 5.95 .016


1 Phoneme 47.60 111.72 .000 42.40 90.45 .000

2 Rhyme 1.30 2.99 .086 0.10 .14 .705

3 Letters 6.20 16.66 .000 2.70 5.95 .016


1 Phoneme 47.60 111.72 .000 42.40 90.45 .000

2 Letters 5.90 15.50 .000 2.70 6.05 .016

3 Rhyme 1.50 4.13 .044 0.00 .10 .757


1 Letters 42.20 89.96 .000 31.40 56.35 .000

2 Phoneme 11.30 29.96 .000 13.70 30.40 .000

3 Rhyme 1.50 4.13 .044 0.00 .10 .757


1 Letters 42.00 89.96 .000 31.40 56.35 .000

2 Rhyme 9.90 25.35 .000 5.30 10.24 .002

3 Phoneme 2.90 7.71 .006 8.40 18.56 .000

Note. Rhymes¼Rhyme Awareness; Phonemes¼Phoneme Awareness; Letters¼Letter Knowledge.


Savage, 2001), it is important to note that these criteria were met using exper-

imental conditions and procedures identical to her own. Our data suggests, fur-

thermore, that Goswami�s (1990a) decision to exclude 4 out of 24 children who

used a �blanket rhyming strategy� from analysis in her earlier study of rhyming

responses in the analogy task may have biased the interpretation of her ownfindings.

It is possible that the pattern of findings shown in Table 1 may be the result of

children�s school experience. Although schools in this study were following the

UK National Literacy Strategy, which places some emphasis on the use of rhyme

in reading, in practice children seemed more familiar with other reading methods.

Children tended to use either whole word reading, or initial phoneme identification

combined with guessing the rest of the word from context, in order to identify new

words. The strategy children used in the rhyme analogy task was best summed up byone five year old boy who said, ‘‘Reading like this is easy, you just say the first sound

and make a rhyme!’’ Combined with our data, his comments suggest that we should

not assume children will utilise an orthographic rime strategy, unless it has been ex-

plicitly taught and children possess the requisite skills for its operation (see Ehri &

Robbins, 1992). These skills include the ability to notice differences in the spelling

in the rime units of the phonological primes in comparison to the clue word at a time

when, in practice, they appear to be using only partial letter cues and guessing in

their reading. In the absence of appropriate strategies and skills, children will dowhat the task appears to demand for success and will generally be happy with the

result.

Skills predicting performance in the orthographic-analogy task and in reading

Chew (1994) has likened the search for the key skills children require in reading to

looking for the key to the �house of reading�. Not surprisingly, a large variety of keys

have been suggested. Goswami (1995) has suggested that learning about onset andrhyme is the most important key and leads to alphabetic learning and the develop-

ment of phoneme awareness; Ehri (1991, 1998) emphasises the importance of letter-

sound knowledge and phoneme awareness as keys to reading acquisition and,

recently, Brown and Deavers (1999) have suggested that, depending on task de-

mands, children may strategically chose to use either the rhyme or phoneme keys

to gain entry to the house of reading.

When the role of these key skills in single word reading was considered, chil-

dren�s phoneme awareness was the strongest predictor of performance. Once pho-neme awareness had been accounted for, rhyme skills did not contribute to

predicting children�s reading skills (see Analyses 3 and 4, Table 4). Letter-sound

knowledge, however, did contribute further in explaining reading performance.

Phonological awareness and letter-sound knowledge therefore appeared to be

the primary predictors of children�s reading skills. Thus for the single word read-

ing at least, our findings appear to support Ehri�s emphasis on the importance of

letter-sound knowledge in combination with phoneme awareness as keys to read-

ing skill.


A more complex story emerged with respect to children�s analogy reading, one

that tends to favour Brown and Deavers� bipartisan approach. In the analogy task,

rhyme appeared to be a more important predictor of performance and this appeared

to be the result of their strategic response to the phonological priming inherent in the

task. As we have already noted, children did not use orthographic analogy but in-stead appear to have predominantly used an initial letter naming strategy combined

with a phonologically based rhyming responses. Thus, children�s ability to segment,

and then name, initial phonemes holds one of the keys to performance in this task

and explains the importance of phoneme awareness and letter-sound knowledge

in predicting performance. However, because children frequently used rhyming

response, rhyme awareness was almost as important as phoneme awareness and let-

ter knowledge in predicting their performance in analogy reading. Indeed, rhyme

contributed a small, but significant, amount to explaining �reading� in the analogytask even after letter-sound knowledge and phoneme awareness had been accounted

for (see Analyses 4 and 5, Table 4).

Taken together, therefore, these findings suggest that both Ehri (1991, 1998) and

Brown and Deavers (1999) have a case. The combination of letter-sound knowledge

with phoneme awareness appear to be the key skills in determining children�s earlyreading performance. Nevertheless, children are able to respond strategically to what

they perceive to be the demands of the task and this changes the balance of the skills

that they draw upon.One issue that is important to address is the way in which we might interpret

the inter-relation between our three potential keys to reading. What was clear in

all the regression analyses that we carried out was the considerable overlap in the

variation explained by each of the three types of tasks. Whichever of the three

tasks was entered first into the equation, it considerably reduced the variation ex-

plained by the other two tasks. The amount of variation explained uniquely by

any individual skill was therefore relatively small in comparison to the variation

that they explained �communally.� The extent of this overlap was highlighted in arecent study that examined pre-schoolers� awareness of syllables, rhymes and pho-

nemes (Anthony et al., 2002). Anthony et al. found that a one-factor model fitted

best when these skills were subjected to factor analysis. Indeed, they noted that

what phonological skills appeared to hold in common was related to print knowl-

edge and rudimentary decoding. It is possible that phonological skills become

more differentiated in later reading as children acquire greater skills; however,

we would argue on the basis of our findings, and those of Anthony et al., that

it might be unwise to suggest that only rhyme or only phoneme skills are impor-tant for children�s early reading. This is particularly important in view of the fact

that children in this study were able to change the balance of skills that they

brought to bear on reading strategically in response to task demands. We there-

fore take issue with studies that suggest an either/or interpretation of data with

respect to the importance of rhyme and phoneme awareness in early reading

(c.f. Goswami & Bryant, 1990; Moustafa, 1995; Walton, 1995 with Duncan, Sey-

mour, & Hill, 2000; Muter, Hulme, Snowling, & Taylor, 1998; Nation & Hulme,

1997).


Of course, one of the reasons why our study appears to show overlap between

rhyme and phoneme skills may be because of the nature of the phonological tasks

that we used. Previous comparisons have typically been between rhyme discrimina-

tion and phoneme deletion tasks. We would argue that, whereas these examine dif-

ferent unit sizes, they also require different levels of skill in manipulatingphonological units. What is apparent from the correlation matrix in Table 3 is that

the nature of the task is likely to be just as important. Implicit awareness tasks (irre-

spective of whether they were rhyme or phoneme based) were more poorly correlated

with reading tasks in comparison to �higher level� production and discrimination and,

particularly, segmentation and manipulation tasks. Although further research is re-

quired, our findings suggest that what children can do with the phonological units is

just as important as the size of the unit they are dealing with.

Implications for reading instruction

Given the fact that phoneme skills and letter-sound knowledge appear to make

unique contributions to predicting reading, one might suggest that teaching the al-

phabet and development of phoneme-level awareness were most important for be-

ginning readers. However, in the light of our findings we would suggest that this

approach may be overly simplistic and that children may apply both rhyme and pho-

neme knowledge to reading tasks. It may therefore be beneficial to use a more eclec-tic approach in which children are taught about both rhymes and phonemes in

addition to the alphabet.

One danger in suggesting that children be taught both types of skills is that it

could result in children with more limited skills, who might benefit from a simpler

approach, becoming overloaded. Data that we have recently obtained suggests that

although children with limited phonological skills benefit from an introduction to

reading via a rhyme first approach, greatest improvement in reading is made from

an approach that combines the application of both rhyme and phoneme skills inreading (Roberts and McDougall, in preparation) rather than phoneme or rhyme

skills alone. This challenges the either/or views that currently predominate in debates

about early reading and suggests that an approach that considers carefully children�sinitial level of skills and ultimately gives them the choice to apply either rhyme or

phoneme knowledge in combination with alphabetic knowledge is most likely to

be successful.

Acknowledgments

We thank the pupils and teachers at Burry Port Infants, Morfa Infants, Stebon-

heath Primary and Swiss Valley Primary schools from the Llanelli area of Carmar-thenshire, whose enthusiastic participation and help made this study possible.

Correspondence regarding this article should be addressed to Dr. Sin�ee McDougall,

Psychology Department, University of Wales Swansea, Swansea SA2 8PP, United

Kingdom.


Appendix A. Orthographic-analogy task

Clue words Test words

Analogous words Ambiguous words Phonological primes

sown mown town loan

most post cost toast

head bread bead said

bone cone none moan

rose nose lose toes

break steak weak cake

Appendix B. Stimuli for rhyme awareness tasks

First rhyme level: Implicit rhyme awareness

Test sentences Rhyme choice

Jack and Jill went up the. . . hill stairs lane ladder

Lucy Locket lost her. . . mittens buttons slippers pocket

Down, down fell the. . . ball clown boy girl

This is a mouse and he lives in a. . . desk box house bootHere is some money to buy some. . . honey chips sweets flowers

Rhyme detection task

All stimuli used in this task were from a set used by Stuart and Coltheart

(1988).

key bee tree

house sock horse

ball leaf knife

nail whale tail

cap map tap

gate boat chair

fan man pan

flag cake cage

Second rhyme level: Production and discrimination

Supplying rhyme task

s-ock, gl-ass, t-ank, v-est

(italics indicates prompt)


Rhyme production task

pig, sock, cat, train, ink, belt, chest, candle

(e.g., suitable responses for sock would be �rock� �lock� �knock�)

�Odd One Out� Task

cat cap tap

box dice foxeye fly flag

pink tank ink

Rhyme matching task

Target Selection stimuli

cap dog tap hat

box dice fork fox

eye tray fly flag

pink ink plum tank

Third rhyme level—Onset and rhyme manipulation

Segmenting words into onset–rhyme

b-oy, h-and, gl-ass, v-est

(hyphenation indicates onset–rhyme separation required for response)

Blending onset and rhyme into words

m-an, n-est, cl-ock, tr-ain

(hyphenation indicates the prompt, consisting of onset and rhyme that children

were required to blend into words)

Appendix C. Stimuli for phoneme awareness tasks

First phoneme level: Implicit phoneme awareness

torch teeth tin

bus bell boat

mouse nurse horse

clock flag leg

coat goat crown

skirt snow star

plant pram planebone dome phone


Children were first asked which words began with the same sound. Children were

then asked to identify the first sound.

Second phoneme level: Production and discrimination

Supplying final phoneme

pi g, bo ne, cand le, han d

(italics indicate the final phoneme to be supplied)

Phoneme production task

Children were given c, d, s, l, p, g, r,m spoken as prompts.

Examples of appropriate responses for b and f would be �book� and �boy� and �fish�and �flower� respectively.

Odd man out task: Initial phoneme or onset

pink blue purple

cow card girl

mouse nurse moon

plane tractor train

bridge pram bricks

skirt shoe shirt

Odd man out task—Final phoneme

pop mouse shiptick dog lock

bus house toast

pan drum sun

Matching task—Initial phoneme or onset

Target Selection Stimuli

pink blue purple green

cow card girl chest

sun star moon cloud

tractor drum lorry train

bridge pram brick pearshirt skirt sock shoe


Matching task—Final phoneme

Target Selection Stimuli

tick dog lock egg

bus bone toast house

ship top bib tub

pan lamb sun dome

Third phoneme level—Phoneme manipulation

Segmenting words into phonemes

m-a-p, d-r-u-m, n-e-s-t, p-l-a-n-t

(hyphenation indicates the phoneme separation required for response)

Blending phonemes to produce words

c-a-p, s-t-o-p, e-l-b-o-w, t-r-u-m-p-e-t

(hyphenation indicates the prompt, consisting of phonemes that children were re-

quired to blend into words)

Deletion of initial phoneme or onset

Stimuli Response

feet now say it again, but don�t say the �f� sound eat

tape now say it again, but don�t say the �t� sound ape

slice now say it again, but don�t say the �sl� sound ice

stool now say it again, but don�t say the �s� sound tool

Deletion of final phoneme

Stimuli Response

card now say it again, but don’t say the �d� sound car

meat now say it again, but don�t say the �t� sound me

lamp now say it again, but don�t say the �p� sound lamb

pink now say it again, but don�t say the �k� sound pin

Deletion of medial phoneme

Stimuli Response

stone now say it again, but don�t say the �t� sound sown

trap now say it again, but don�t say the �r� sound tap

snail now say it again, but don�t say the �n� sound sail

nest now say it again, but don�t say the �s� sound net

camp now say it again, but don�t say the �m� sound cap

cart now say it again, but don�t say the �r� sound cat


Addition of medial phoneme

Stimuli Response

rake now say it again, but add a ‘‘b’’ sound to the beginning brake

fat now say it again, but add a ‘‘s’’ sound before the ‘‘t’’ fast

car now say it again, but add a ‘‘d’’ sound to the end card

rain now say it again, but add a ‘‘c’’ sound to the beginning crane

sail now say it again, but add a ‘‘n’’ sound after the ‘‘s’’ snail

tie now say it again, but add a ‘‘t’’ sound to the end tight

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