Artikel
Testverfahren zur Phonemdiskrimination und phonologischen Bewusstheit im Vorschulalter
Tests for phoneme discrimination and phonological awareness for children in preschool age
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Veröffentlicht: | 15. September 2005 |
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Gliederung
Zusammenfassung
Ziel der in diesem Vortrag vorgestellten Studien ist es, die Basisfähigkeiten für die auditive Verarbeitung von Sprachlauten und die phonologische Informationsverarbeitung zu untersuchen. Dazu wurden zwei Tests entwickelt und erprobt.
Der erste Test („titatu") erfasst die Phonemidentifikation und benutzt ein sprach- bzw. wortfreies Paradigma. In einem „Hörspiel" muss das Kind Silben, die aus einer einfachen Kombination von einem Konsonant und einem Vokal zusammengestellt sind, erkennen. Die Spielform gewährleistet die notwendige Motivation der Kinder für diese Aufgabe. In 2 Subtests werden nur die Vokale geändert bzw. in weiteren 4 Subtests nur die Konsonanten. Die Subtests unterscheiden sich nach Phonemkontrast.
In dem zweiten Test werden die gleichen Silben aus dem titatu-Test verwendet; die Aufgabe ist nun, die gehörte Silbe als Anfang eines Wortes zu erkennen und das zutreffende Wort aus 6 vorhandenen Bildern am PC-Bildschirm anzuklicken. Um diese Aufgabe zu lösen muss das Kind nicht nur die Silben identifizieren, sondern auch auf Basis der phonologischen Informationsverarbeitung zu einem Wort ergänzen können. Somit wird ein Teilaspekt der phonologischen Bewusstheit erfasst.
Beide Testverfahren wurden bei 300 Kindern zwischen 3-7 Jahren eingesetzt (deutsch und flämisch). Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass Kinder ab 4 Jahren in der Lage sind, die titatu-Aufgabe zu lösen mit über 90% korrekter Antworten. Der Wortergänzungstest zeigt eine stark altersabhängige Leistung, die von ca. 30% bei 4 Jahren bis auf 90% bei 7 Jahren ansteigt.
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Introduction
Since the implementation of neonatal hearing screening, early and improved fitting of (digital) hearing instruments as well as cochlear implants, the auditory capabilities of deaf and hard-of-hearing children have improved significantly. Auditory skills like discrimination and identification of most if not all phonemes are realistic achievements; this provides a basis for the development of phonological awareness.
This poster reports on R&D activities in IfAP (Institut für Audiopädagogik) re the development of multimedia interactive software for training and assessment of phonological awareness in children. Initial target groups have been children with normal hearing but with an at-risk language development.
Methods
General
Diagnostic software has been developed based on the AudioTrack software. Children are supposed to be familiar with the task already or get familiar with it rather quickly. The training software AudioTrack has been adapted re data management and functional adjustments (no feedback is given regarding the correctness of a response).
Phoneme identification
The ability to discriminate and identify speech sounds is a prerequisite for Phonological Awareness. Therefore, this ability is being evaluated using the "teetaatoo" Test.
In the audioTrack software, the child will hear a consonant-vowel syllable (CV). In a particular test set, the C might be constant and the V changing (tee, taa, too etc). The target CV is presented as the stimulus by clicking the red cell (see Figure 1 [Fig. 1]); the response alternatives are being presented by clicking the blue cells (see Figure 1 [Fig. 1]). The child is responding by dragging the red cell to the selected blue cell.
This test contains no words and is consequently independent of the child's vocabulary. The "teetaatoo" test contains
• two vowel sets: one with large contrasts, one with small contrasts
• four consonant sets: one with large contrasts, three with small contrasts (one set only containing plosives, another only fricatives).
Word completion
The same set of CV syllables from the "teetaatoo" test is being used also in the Word Completion test.
The child's task starts with listening to a CV-stimulus. The child has to complete this syllable to a complete i.e. existing word and has to identify which word within a closed set is the correct one (see Figure 2 [Fig. 2]).
This test contains the same 6 subtests as within teetaatoo: two vowel and four consonant groups, differing in contrast i.e. also in difficulty level.
Evaluation
The Phoneme Identification Test (teetaatoo) and the Word Completion Test have been evaluated on n=124 Flemish speaking children in Antwerp/Belgium and n=85 German speaking children in Aachen (Germany). All children did not have any known hearing loss or language developmental delay.
Normal functional was confirmed by applying the AAST (Adaptive Auditory Speech Test; Coninx, 2005).
The children were from monolingual families.
Results
Phoneme identification (Figure 3 [Fig. 3])
• The format of the Phoneme Identification Test can be used for children as young as 4 years.
• The scores are slightly dependent on age, presumably because of cognitive and concentration factors.
• The results for the Flemish and German groups are equal, confirming the language independency of the Phoneme Identification Test (word-free).
Word completion test (Figure 4 [Fig. 4])
• Also the Word Completion Test can be used with children as young as 4 years
• The scores show a stronger dependency on age, reflecting the growing Phonological Awareness in the age range from 4 to 7 years.
• More data and further analysis is needed to explain the differences between the Flemish and German groups (language related differences in test difficulty? Faster/slower development of phonological awareness in Flanders and Germany?)
Testing software - ongoing activities
Based on the same formats as used in the Phoneme Identification and Word Completion Tests (i.e. the audioTrack interactive game), a comprehensive test battery for Phonological Information Processing has been developed, called "Solinger Evaluation of Phonological Information processing (SEPI)".
All tests are receptive, avoiding interferences with expressive speech skills of the child. SEPI allows the assessment of various levels of phonological awareness and auditory working memory, which are two of the predictors of dyslexia. Items like rhyming, synthesizing and analyzing at the phoneme and syllable levels were used to check the ability of a child to operate on formal level of words. In the subtest "auditory memory working" children hear a stimulus, which consists of a sequence of consonant-vocal (cv) syllables. A second stimulus is given after a certain delay. The child has to decide whether both stimuli were the same or not. After two subsequent correct answers the stimulus will be increased by one syllable, i.e. shortened by one syllable after an incorrect answer. This adaptive procedure is used to find a threshold value for the number of syllables the child can auditorily memorize.
SEPI is being evaluated.