• Speech Sciences
• /
• v.14 no.4
• /
• pp.41-52
• /
• 2007

Recent experimental studies have shown that language-users' knowledge of the statistical characteristic of their native language plays a key role in their task performance. One specific instance of this that the current study focuses on is the effect of phonotactic probabilities on speakers' wordlikeness judgment of nonwords. In this paper, I explore the question of whether the judgment of Korean speaking subjects as to the wordlikeness of Korean nonsense words is influenced by the degree of association between two-phoneme sequences in Korean. The current results suggest that the objective measure of correlations (expressed by $r_{\phi}$ values) between an onset consonant and a vowel inside Korean syllables play an important role in Korean speakers' nonword processing. The current results additionally indicate an effect of the correlations of two-phoneme sequences including vowels and coda consonants on nonword processing. Implications of these findings for Korean speakers' learning the correlations between adjacent segments inside the syllable are discussed.

• Journal of the Korean Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry
• /
• v.14 no.1
• /
• pp.81-94
• /
• 2003

Objectives：Developmental reading disorder is a condition which manifests significant developmenttal delay in reading ability or persistent errors. About 3-7% of school-age children have this condition. The purpose of the present study was to validate the diagnostic values of Word/Nonword Reading Test and Letter-Symbol Discrimination Task for the purpose of overcoming the caveats of Basic Learning Skills Test. Methods：Sixty-three reading-disordered patients(mean age 10.48 years old) and sex, age-matched 77 normal children(mean age 10.33 years old) were selected by clinical evaluation and DSM-IV criteria. Reading I and II of Basic Learning Skills Test, Word/Nonword Reading Test, and Letter-Symbol Discrimination Task were carried out to them. Word/Nonword Reading Test：One hundred usual highfrequency words and one hundred meaningless nonwords were presented to the subjects within 1.2 and 2.4 seconds, respectively. Through these results, automatized phonological processing ability and conscious letter-sound matching ability were estimated. Letter-Symbol Discrimination Task：mirror image letters which reading-disordered patients are apt to confuse were used. Reliability, concurrent validity, construct validity, and discriminant validity tests were conducted. Results：Word/Nonword Reading Test：the reliability(alpha) was 0.96, and concurrent validity with Basic Learning Skills test was 0.94. The patients with developmental reading disorders differed significantly from normal children in Word/Nonword Reading Test performances. Through discriminant analysis, 83.0% of original cases were correctly classified by this test. Letter-Symbol Discrimination Task：the reliability(alpha) was 0.86, and concurrent validity with Basic Learning Skills test was 0.86. There were significant differences in scores between the patients and normal children. Factor analysis revealed that this test were composed of saccadic mirror image processing, global accuracy, mirror image processing deficit, static image processing, global vigilance deficit, and inattention-impulsivity factors. By discriminant analysis, 87.3% of the patients and normal children were correctly classified. Conclusion：The patients with developmental reading disorders had deficits in automatized visuallexical route, morpheme-phoneme conversion mechanism, and visual information processing. These deficits were reliably and validly evaluated by Word/Nonword Reading Test and Letter-Symbol Discrimination Task.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
• /
• v.12 no.1
• /
• pp.51-63
• /
• 2020

Phonological awareness is a metalinguistic awareness ability of phonology and is known to predict language skills, such as reading and vocabulary skills. The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between phonological awareness, phonological processing, and language skills in 4- to 6-years-old typically developing (TD) children and children with language delay (LD). A total of 32 children (TD=18, LD=15) participated in this study. They performed a phonological awareness task consisting of counting, deletion, and discrimination at syllable level. Nonword Repetition, Digit Backward, Receptive & Expressive Vocabulary Test, and Grammaticality Judgment Task were performed to analyze the correlation between phonological awareness, phonological processing, and language ability. A multiple stepwise regression analysis was performed to examine the phonological awareness subtasks that predict language ability. In the TD group, the syllable categorization task significantly predicted the receptive vocabulary and the performance of the Grammaticality Judgment Task. The LD group showed that the syllable counting task significantly predicted the receptive vocabulary, the expressive vocabulary, and the performance of the Grammaticality Judgment Task. The results showed that the phonological awareness performance was significantly different between the two groups. Further, correlation analysis and regression analysis showed different results for each group. The result of the phonological awareness performance predicted the language ability of each group significantly, suggesting the importance of the meta-linguistic awareness ability of phonology.