Longitudinal effects of phonological awareness intervention on morphological awareness in children with speech impairment

Purpose: This study examined reading performance and morphological awareness development in 2 groups of children with speech impairment who had received differing types of intervention during their preschool years. Method: The children were aged between 7;6 and 9;5 (years; months) at the time of the study. Group 1 (n = 8) had received preschool intervention to facilitate phonological awareness and letter knowledge in addition to improving speech production. Group 2 (n = 9) had received preschool intervention that focused solely on improving speech intelligibility. A third group of children with typical development (Group 3, n = 24) also participated in the study. Two reading tests were administered, one that assessed word recognition and another that assessed nonword decoding. Two tests of morphological awareness were also administered, one that tested the spelling of morphologically complex words and another that tested the oral generation of the base form of derived words. Results: Children with a history of speech impairment who had received phonological awareness intervention (Group 1) performed significantly better on nonword decoding and on the spelling of morphologically complex words than did children with a history of speech impairment whose intervention focused on speech only (Group 2). The typically developing children (Group 3) were not significantly different from Group 1 on the spelling of morphologically complex words, and like Group 1, they outperformed Group 2 on this measure. However, Group 3 did not perform significantly better than Group 2 on nonword decoding, and both of these groups performed significantly more poorly than Group 1 on this measure. There were no group differences in the ability to orally generate base words. Conclusion: Children with a history of speech impairment who had received phonological awareness intervention and who became proficient readers demonstrated an ability to use morphological awareness in the spelling process that was similar to that of their peers without speech impairment. These findings highlight the potential long-term benefits associated with early phonological awareness intervention.