The relationship between phonological awareness time and reading abilities: an assessment using self-organizing maps

Abstract

Background: Classically, the assessment of reading disabilities is based on the accuracy for word and nonword reading, as well as on the accuracy or sensibility measures (such as d') for phonological awareness tasks. Recent studies indicate that in terms of phonological awareness results, the response time is a more accurate indicator than sensibility measures (such as d'), thus providing an important measure explaining some of the differences between good and poor readers. This article explores the discriminative capability of phonological awareness task time (PATT) in reading disability assessment. Methods: One hundred and eighty-six children were tested using conventional tasks, specifically word reading, nonword reading, and phonological awareness tasks. The word and nonword accuracy and PATT were used to train self-organizing maps (SOM) to classify children into three distinct groups. Results: Phonological awareness response time provides a powerful discriminative measure. Conclusions: Our results indicate that the PATT constitutes a useful selective measure, particularly in the third and fourth grades when classical variables such as word and nonword reading accuracy lose their discriminative capabilities. Also, the use of SOM to classify children's reading abilities can successfully categorize children and capture meaningful measures such as the lexicality effect.