title: Phonological awareness and rapid naming predict word attack and word identification in adults with mild mental retardation.
abstract: In this study we asked whether measures of phonological awareness and rapid naming were correlated with single-word reading skills of 30 adults with mild mental retardation. We presented four tests of phonological awareness (for rime, first, middle, and end-sound categorization), two rapid-naming tests (pictures and letters), and the Woodcock Word-Identification and Word-Attack subtests. All four phonological-awareness measures and both rapid-naming measures were significantly correlated with both word-attack and word-identification skills. This outcome is consistent with findings from typically developing children, suggesting that instruction in phonological awareness would facilitate the acquisition of word-attack skills in individuals with mental retardation.
authors.affiliation: University of Kansas, USA. ksaunders@ku.edu
authors.forename: Kathryn J
authors.initials: KJ
authors.lastname: Saunders
authors.forename: Anthony
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: DeFulio
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001364:Awareness; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008607:Intellectual Disability / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000523:psychology; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual; D010700:Phonetics; D011930:Reaction Time; D011932:Reading; D013068:Speech Production Measurement; D014706:Verbal Learning; D014825:Vocabulary