The relationship between prosodic perception, phonological awareness and vocabulary in emergent literacy

Studies have begun to focus on what skills contribute to the development of phonological awareness, an important predictor of reading attainment. One of these skills is the perception of prosody, which is the rhythm, tempo and stress of a language. To examine whether prosodic perception contributes to phonological awareness prior to reading tuition, we assessed 49 prereaders. Using confirmatory factor analysis, we found that measures of prosodic perception and phonological awareness loaded onto separate factors. Our regression analyses revealed that prosodic perception accounted for significant variance after partialling out definitional vocabulary and memory for digits, but not after accounting for receptive vocabulary. Based on the independence of prosodic perception from definitional vocabulary, we concluded that prosodic perception contributes to the development of phonological awareness indirectly through receptive vocabulary, by improving speech-processing skills, but independently of semantic knowledge. Further studies should examine the role of prosody in children at risk of later reading difficulties.