Word Frequency and Age Effects in Normally Developing Children's Phonological Processing

Eleven kindergarten-age students and 11 second-grade students were asked to perform each of four phonological processing tasks: (a) confrontation naming of object drawings, (b) rapid sequential naming of object drawings and letters, (c) segmentation of words into sounds, and (d) blending sounds to produce words. Response accuracy and, for the picture naming tasks, response latency were measured. In addition, single-word reading ability and silent reading comprehension were evaluated. Results indicated that high-frequency stimuli were named faster and, in one task, more accurately than low-frequency stimuli. Blending sounds to produce high-frequency words was less difficult than blending sounds to produce low-frequency words, but word frequency did not affect sound segmentation performance. Children in second grade generally were faster and more accurate than kindergarten children in naming pictures. They also were able to segment more sounds and correctly blend sounds to produce more target words than kindergarten students. Confrontation naming accuracy, rapid object-and letter-naming latency, and sound segmentation and blending accuracy were intercorrelated and were related to word recognition and to reading comprehension. Serial naming speed was highly related to phonological awareness in kindergarten, whereas confrontation naming accuracy was highly related to phonological awareness in second grade. A limited cognitive resources framework was adopted to interpret these findings.

KEY WORDS: phonological processing, phonological awareness, word retrieval, reading

Submitted on April 17, 1995
Accepted on May 22, 1996