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We investigated the development of phonological awareness and reading abilities in French-speaking children aged 5 - 12 years. Participants were divided into seven groups (kindergarten to grade 6). Metaphonological tasks included segmentation, blending and inversion at the syllable and the phoneme level, reading of regular and irregular words and nonwords, rhyme production and rhyme recognition. We hypothesised that: (1) children will rely more heavily on phonological awareness in the first years of reading acquisition; (2) development of phonological awareness at the phoneme level will facilitate reading of regular words and nonwords. Results in metaphonological tasks showed a clear developmental progression between kindergarten and 2nd grade. Regular words were easily read in grade 2, nonwords were adequately decoded in grade 3, whereas irregular word reading gradually increased until grade 6 and beyond. These results suggest that the facilitatory effect between phonological awareness and reading appears to be limited to the phoneme unit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to evaluate the possible consequences of temporal lobe epilepsy on reading acquisition, we first compared the reading skills and phonological awareness abilities in a set of 13-year-old identical twins, one of whom is affected by temporal lobe epilepsy (LB). We then compared their performances to those of an age- and IQ-matched control group. Both siblings have an intellectual quotient above average as well as normal memory and linguistic abilities. Results showed that the reading age of LB (assessed by the Lefabvrais French reading test) was more than two years behind expectations whereas that of her sister was above average. Further, in contrast to her sister and healthy control subjects, LB exhibited specific deficits in elaborate metaphonological awareness abilities (non-word repetition, rhyme production, phonemic segmentation and syllabic inversion). These could be linked to temporal lobe dysfunction, thus confirming the important role of the temporal lobes in reading acquisition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]