The development of phonemic awareness in reading-disabled children

Abstract Reading-disabled children display a phonemic awareness deficit when compared with normally achieving children matched for word reading ability. However, previous research has not examined phonemic awareness deficits in reading-disabled children when compared with children matched on pseudoword reading. This article examines phonemic awareness ability in both a traditional design and a pseudoword reading level match design. The results show that a group of reading-disabled children who show typical pseudoword reading and phonemic awareness deficits in the traditional reading level match design nonetheless have phonemic awareness skills commensurate with their level of pseudoword reading ability.