A few days ago, I was casually listening to a
lecture by Dr. Nancy Mather, one of the developers of the Woodcock-Johnson
test. At the beginning of the second hour of the lecture, Mather noted that
different phonological tests vary in their levels of difficulty and in the
demands they place on working-memory resources. She stated that the more
complex tests, which place higher demands on working memory, are the ones that
correlate more strongly with reading and are more likely to be low in children
with reading difficulties.
I read the papers Mather referred to, as well as several additional papers, and saw that there are at least four dimensions of difficulty in tests that assess phonological awareness.
The first dimension relates to output — whether the child needs to produce phonological output or not. The phonological output could be a word, or parts of a word, that was presented in the stimulus. The task “Do david and deborah begin with the same sound?” in which the child answers “yes/no,” does not require phonological output and is easier than the task “Say the first sound in the word david.”
The second dimension of difficulty is the size of the unit being
segmented. A child aged 4–5 can segment words into syllables. For
example, the word submarine contains three syllables: sub-ma-rine. Later, at
age 5–6, the child can segment words into onset-rime components — that is,
consonant-plus-vowel pairs. For example, the word submarine contains five such components
or three such pairs: s-ub /m-a /r-in. Finally, with the acquisition of reading,
the child can segment words into phonemes. The word submarine contains eight
phonemes: s-u-b-m-u-r-i-n. Tests that require segmentation into syllables are
easier than tests that require segmentation into onset-rime pairs, and those
are easier than tests that require segmentation into phonemes.
The third dimension of difficulty relates to the location of the
unit on which the task is performed within the word. It is easier to
isolate or replace the first syllable, onset-rime, or phoneme in a word than
the final syllable, onset-rime, or phoneme.
The fourth dimension of difficulty stems from the degree of
manipulation required — that is, the degree of working memory involvement. Here,
one can roughly distinguish between two levels of difficulty. The easier level
includes tests that require phoneme isolation, blending, and segmentation. The
more difficult level includes tests that require manipulation of the sounds in
the word: deletion, substitution, or rearrangement of sounds. Manipulating the
sounds of a word requires greater working-memory resources than phoneme
isolation, blending, and segmentation. Therefore, these tests are more
difficult.
Here are examples of tests at difficulty level 1 — the easier level:
Isolation: The child listens to a word and must say the
opening or closing syllable or phoneme of the word. For example, the word submarine
begins with the syllable sub or the phoneme s. Here, the second dimension of
difficulty comes into play: the smaller the unit the child is required to
isolate, the more difficult the task.
Blending: The child listens to a word that is presented in
segmented form — segmented into syllables, sub-ma-rine; into onset-rimes, s-ub-m-a-r-in;
or into phonemes, s-u-b-m-u-r-i-n — and must say the complete word, “submarine.”
The smaller the units that must be blended, the more difficult the task.
Segmentation: The child listens to a whole word and must break it into
syllables, onset-rimes, or phonemes. The smaller the units into which the child
is required to segment the word, the more difficult the test.
Several studies have found that blending is
easier than segmentation (Pufpaff, 2009).
Here are examples of tests at difficulty level 2 — the more difficult
level:
Deletion:
The child listens to a whole word and must say it without one of its
components. For example, the child is asked to say the word “elephant” without
the sound ph; the answer is “eleant.” The deleted part, of course, may appear
at the beginning, middle, or end of the word. The deleted part may be a
syllable, cluster, or phoneme, and these factors influence the task’s level of
difficulty.
Substitution: The child listens to a whole word and is
asked to replace one of its sounds with another sound. For example: replace the
sound ph in the word “elephant” with the sound g. What word do you get? The
answer is “elegant.” The task requires segmenting the word into its sounds,
isolating the required sound, deleting it, adding the new sound, and blending
the sounds together into a whole word. Again, the replaced part may be located
anywhere in the word and may vary in size.
Reversal: The child listens to a whole word and is asked to
say its sounds in reverse order. For example, if we say the word posh — p-o-sh
— from end to beginning, what word do we get? The answer is shop.
Complex tests that include deletion, substitution, or reversal of
phonemes predict reading better and are more strongly correlated with reading
than less complex tests, in which the working-memory component is weaker, such
as isolation, blending, or segmentation (Kilpatrick, 2012).
In all these tasks, the level of difficulty
can be increased further by word length. The longer the word, the more
difficult the task. In most tests, word length increases as one progresses
through the test items.
Another aspect that, in my opinion, sometimes makes the task more
difficult is whether it is performed on real words or on pseudowords. When
the product of the task is a real word, it provides the child with a form of
monitoring. That is, if the child performs the task and arrives at a
pseudoword, they know they made a mistake and can try to correct it. When the
product is a pseudoword, there is no such monitoring. Sometimes — though not
always — it is easier to perform phonemic manipulations on real words than on
pseudowords, because it is easier to hold real words in working memory. If the
test includes real words in a high linguistic register, a child with a weak
vocabulary will experience them as pseudowords and will struggle to perform the
task.
Dorofeeva, S. V.,
Laurinavichyute, A., Reshetnikova, V., Akhutina, T. V., Tops, W., & Dragoy,
O. (2020). Complex phonological tasks predict reading in 7 to 11 years of age
typically developing Russian children. Journal of Research in Reading, 43(4),
516–535. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9817.12327
Kilpatrick, D. A. (2012).
Phonological segmentation assessment is not enough: A comparison of three
phonological awareness tests with first and second graders. Canadian Journal of
School Psychology, 27(2), 150–165. https://doi.org/10.1177/0829573512438635
Pufpaff, L. A. (2009). A
developmental continuum of phonological sensitivity skills. Psychology in the
Schools, 46(7), 679–691. https://doi.org/10.1002/pits.20407
Really Great Reading https://www.reallygreatreading.com/blog/six-layers-phonemic-awareness#:~:text=Manipulation:%20Truly%20refined%20phonemic%20awareness,to%20form%20a%20new%20word.
Mather, N. (2025).
Overview of WJ V Achievement and the Virtual Test Library. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHOX_mRE9FQ&t=1323s
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