title: The causal role of phoneme awareness and letter-sound knowledge in learning to read: combining intervention studies with mediation analyses.
abstract: There is good evidence that phoneme awareness and letter-sound knowledge are reliable longitudinal predictors of learning to read, though whether they have a causal effect remains uncertain. In this article, we present the results of a mediation analysis using data from a previous large-scale intervention study. We found that a phonology and reading intervention that taught letter-sound knowledge and phoneme awareness produced significant improvements in these two skills and in later word-level reading and spelling skills. Improvements in letter-sound knowledge and phoneme awareness at the end of the intervention fully mediated the improvements seen in children's word-level literacy skills 5 months after the intervention finished. Our findings support the conclusion that letter-sound knowledge and phoneme awareness are two causal influences on the development of children's early literacy skills.
authors.affiliation: Division of Psychology and Language Sciences, University College London, Chandler House, 2 Wakefield St., London, England WC1N 2PF. c.hulme@ucl.ac.uk
authors.forename: Charles
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Hulme
authors.forename: Claudine
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Bowyer-Crane
authors.forename: Julia M
authors.initials: JM
authors.lastname: Carroll
authors.forename: Fiona J
authors.initials: FJ
authors.lastname: Duff
authors.forename: Margaret J
authors.initials: MJ
authors.lastname: Snowling
mesh_terms: D001364:Awareness; D002675:Child, Preschool; D004522:Educational Status; D006801:Humans; D007858:Learning; D008960:Models, Psychological; D010700:Phonetics; D011578:Psycholinguistics; D011932:Reading