Rhona S. Johnston
University of St. Andrews, Fife, Scotland

There is considerable evidence that there is a close association between
phonological awareness and reading ability. One of the best correlates of
later success at reading is preschool phonological awareness ability (e.g.,
Bradley & Bryant, 1983; Lundberg, Olofsson, & Wall, 1980, Share, Jorm,
Maclean, & Matthews, 1984; Stanovich, Cunningham, & Cramer, 1984;
Stuart & Coltheart, 1988). Phonological awareness is, therefore, seen as
an important precursor of literacy skills. It is also proposed that some
children are so deficient at acquiring phonological awareness skills that
they have difficulty in becoming competent readers ( Bradley & Bryant,
1978, 1983). Support for the idea that poor readers' problems are
phonological in nature comes from the fact that studies have found poor
readers to have difficulty in using a phonological approach to reading
(i.e., they have problems in reading nonwords), and that they have deficient
phonological or phonemic awareness skills for reading level (e.g., Baddeley,
Ellis, Miles, & Lewis, 1982; Bradley & Bryant, 1978; Holligan & Johnston,
1988, 1991; Olson, Wise, Conners, & Rack, 1990; Snowling, 1981).

Not all studies, however, show poor readers to have deficient nonword
naming or phonemic awareness skills for reading age (e.g., Baddeley, Logie,
& Ellis, 1988; Beech & Harding, 1984; Johnston, Rugg, & Scott, 1987;
Szeszulski & Manis, 1987; Treiman & Hirsh-Pasek, 1985). Such apparently
aberrant findings have been attributed to methodological weaknesses in
these studies, such as failure to match poor readers adequately on verbal

-287-