Syllable Awareness in Kannada Speaking Children with Cerebral Palsy

Abstract

Syllable awareness is a metaphonological skill that is acquired by children before acquisition of phoneme awareness skills. Its importance has been documented in alphabetic languages where it functions as a predictor of later reading success. However, it has been less researched in alphasyllabary languages with dearth of knowledge in childhood disorders like cerebral palsy. In the present study, the skills of syllable stripping and syllable oddity for words and non-words were studied using the Metaphonological Skills Test (Prema, 1997) in Kannada speaking children with cerebral palsy (n=12) and language-age (> 8 years) matched with typically developing peers (n=30). The findings revealed that performance for syllable stripping and syllable oddity for words was on par for both groups. However, children with cerebral palsy (CWCP) performed poorly on syllable oddity for non-words proving that the ability to engage in overt articulation has an indirect influence on their performance.