Does Socio Economic Status Influence Phonological Awareness Skills?

Abstract

Researchers have reported the influence of various factors affecting phonological awareness in children, but there appears to be limited literature reporting the influence of socio economic status on the phonological awareness in Indian context. Hence the present study was planned to see the difference in performance between children from lower and middle socio economic status for phonological awareness tasks. A total of 20 native Kannada speaking children within the age range of 6 to 14 years were selected for the study and were divided into 2 groups, Group 1 consisted of 10 normal children with lower socio economic status & Group 2 consisted of 10 normal children with middle socio economic status. 'Test of Learning Disability' in Kannada which had 7 subtests to assess phonological awareness was used. The responses were collected from each child and statistically analysed. Results revealed high scores for middle socio economic status children and the lower scores were obtained by lower socio economic grade children. There was significant difference in terms of performance in all tasks except, syllable oddity (final) task. Hence, it was evident from the result that, children from low socio economic status background performed below than the children from middle socio economic status. Therefore from the present study it can be concluded that socio economic status is evident for development of phonological awareness and clinician has to concentrate also on certain factors as poorer home literacy, including limited access to reading materials or modelling of reading by adults in the home, during the assessment of phonological awareness.