Correlation between Phonological Awareness and Reading Speed and Accuracy in Children with Central Auditory Processing Disorder

Phonological awareness refers to the person's knowledge of units of oral language that is important in learning alphabetic languages. Reading is a high level of language proficiency, whereby the person decodes symbols of spoken language shown as written language. With regard to the importance of reading skills, the present study was conducted to investigate the correlation between phonological awareness and its subtests with reading speed and accuracy in children with central auditory processing disorder (CAPD) to take a step toward increasing their linguistic knowledge and to provide the grounds to inform them and to employ educational and rehabilitation strategies in order to meet their needs. Phonological awareness test, in three levels of syllabic, intra-syllabic, and phonemic, including 180 pictures, and also text reading speed and accuracy tests were administered on 15 children with CAPD and the correlation between phonological awareness and its subtests with reading speed and accuracy was determined using Pearson correlation coefficient. A correlation was found between general phonological awareness test and reading speed and accuracy, and among subtests of phonological awareness, including syllable awareness, inter-syllable awareness and phonemic awareness, there was only a correlation between phonemic awareness and reading speed and accuracy. In children with CAPD, due to the delay and problem in achieving phonemic processing skills, they encounter problems in correct comprehension of speech sounds and their distinctive features that could affect their achieving phonological awareness and therefore, the related skills, including reading, is weakened, too. Therefore, it is important to pay attention to phonological skills of children with CAPD along with strengthening their auditory processing skills to improve and strengthen their reading skills either.