Playful Sounds Research

Phonemic Awareness Principles

• Phonological processes of perception and speech production likely enhance each other. ⁴
• Phonemic awareness differentiates between children who succeed in reading and those who struggle. ^{1 5 10 14 15 16 21}
• Because speech sounds do not exist as separate units in natural speech,¹¹and because of the consequences of failure to learn to discern and manipulate these sounds in words, instruction in phonemic awareness is critical. ^{5 8 11 17 18}
• Instruction in phonemic awareness is effective and efficient. ^{5 17 18 20}
• Specific tasks develop phonemic awareness ^{5 17 8}
• The focus should be on early instruction and prevention. ^{3 5 8}
• Children succeed in learning PA skills via instructional structure or 'scaffolding.' Task elements are manipulated from simpler to more complex, and to provide for initial supports, then gradual independence. Playful Sounds incorporates these elements of scaffolding:
  • concrete representations to help focus attention
  • opportunities for student to produce specific sounds
  • control of phonological awareness difficulty (e.g. rhyming tasks are simplest, segmentation and manipulation tasks are most difficult)
  • control of response difficulty (e.g. receptive/pointing tasks before expressive/naming tasks)
  • control of task units (e.g. segmenting by word before segmenting by syllable)
  • control of linguistic characteristics (e.g. 'stretchy' continuant sounds before 'non-stretchy' stop sounds)
  • reduced scaffolding support as children become more proficient (e.g. 'easier' and 'more difficult' task versions) ^{10 17 18 21}
• Phonemic awareness proceeds in overlapping stages. Mastery at one step is not required to benefit from the next. ¹⁷
• Three- and 4-year-olds, including those with moderate or severe speech impairment, can learn phonemic awareness via developmentally appropriate activities. (Phonemic awareness is part of a larger category called 'phonological awareness,' which includes pre-skills such as rhyming. In Playful Sounds, the term ‘phonemic awareness’ is used to include both). ^{3 17}
• Motor Learning in Therapy for Speech Sound Disorders: "Phonetic placement has been shown to be effective for teaching a child how to say a new sound." ¹⁵
• For speech, research supports approaches that address the phonological system as a whole, improving perceptual, articulatory and phonological knowledge of misarticulated sounds. ¹⁵ However, the efficacy of nonspeech oral-motor exercises is not supported. ^{9 12 13 19}