Exploring Assessment Demands and Task Supports in Early Childhood Phonological Awareness Assessments

Phonological awareness is assessed in various ways in both research studies and early childhood classrooms. The measures used to assess phonological awareness are related closely, although they differ in the linguistic unit used (e.g., word, syllable, onset-rime, or phoneme), the position of the linguistic unit (e.g., initial, medial, final), the task operation (e.g., detection, segmentation, deletion, production), the response mode (e.g., verbal, nonverbal), the task support or demands (e.g., picture prompts or memory demands), and in words used (low vs. high age of acquisition). To understand phonological awareness assessments better, phonological awareness tasks used with young children were examined based on these variations. The results indicate that considerable variability exists in the cognitive demands on phonological awareness assessments used in early childhood settings. These results raise some important questions regarding how phonological awareness is assessed in early childhood. Moreover, variations in response format and task support/demand are likely to increase or decrease the complexity of the tasks, which could have implications for classroom instruction and intervention.