Abstract
Fifty children aged 3–7 years were asked to repeat spoken sentences and then to divide up these sentences into words, the words into syllables, and the syllables into speech sounds. There was a clear developmental progression in the ability to analyze spoken language in this way. The skills of analyzing sentences into words and words into syllables were highly related. Items requiring analysis of syllables into phonemes were highly correlated with each other and somewhat independent of sentence and word analysis items. The results are related to Gibson's model of reading, in which the acquisition of grapheme-phoneme correspondences is a crucial process.
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This project was supported in part by U.S. Public Health Service, Maternal and Child Health Project No. 916, and by Grant HD-03110 from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. Funds for computer processing were provided by the Department of Psychology of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
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Fox, B., Routh, D.K. Analyzing spoken language into words, syllables, and phonomes: A developmental study. J Psycholinguist Res 4, 331–342 (1975). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01067062
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01067062