ABSTRACT
Recent accounts of reading acquisition and reading disability have focused on the now impressive body of evidence linking reading problems to limited phonological awareness. The strong association between reading and phonological awareness has been observed for a variety of alphabetic orthographies and transcends individual differences in IQ, vocabulary knowledge, chronological age, or even reading experience; the association holds from kindergarten to adulthood and across a diverse set of measures (Adams, 1990; Liberman, Shankweiler, & Liberman, 1989; Pratt & Brady, 1988; Rack, Snow ling & Olson, 1992; Stanovich, 1988). Still other research indicates that phoneme awareness is a necessary, though not sufficient, component of normal reading acquisition (e.g., Gough & Tunmer, 1986; Juel, 1988).
