Phonological representation skills in typically developing Preschoolers

Phonological representations are considered the source of speech sound information that forms the basis of spoken words. Phonological awareness tasks, as well as other expressive tasks, are used to infer phonological representations. However, receptive tasks are increasingly used to assess phonological representations in preschool children. Since the phonological structures vary in each language, there is an increasing need to examine the underlying representations in various languages. The present study evaluated articulation error identification for vowels and consonants in Malayalam speaking preschool children aged 3.6 to 5 years. An articulation error identification and correction test for vowels and consonants developed by the investigators was administered to all the participants. Thirty words with clusters within the vocabulary of children aged 3.6 to 5 years were used as target items for the test. The results revealed that age had a significant effect on the scores obtained in the tasks, with children in the older age group scoring higher than the younger age group. Better scores were obtained for consonants than for vowels, signifying a developmental trend in the ability to detect subtle articulatory modifications. From the results it is evident that preschool children have developed adequate phonological representations to distinguish errors in a single phoneme. The results also support the pivotal role of articulation error identification tasks for the assessment of underlying phonological representations in preschool children. Data of Phonological representations in Malayalam speaking preschool children is less. This study aimed at understanding the phonological representations in Malayalam speaking preschool children in the age range of 3.6-5.0 years.