Abstract: Sex differences in phonological sensitivity and awareness were assessed using well-established linguistic measures in translation in a two-year longitudinal study on a sample of 136 children during their first two years at school. Girls obtained significantly higher means on a number of measures of phonological sensitivity but not on tests of ability (Coloured Progressive Matrices) (Cohen’s d with Hedges adjustment for sample size = .18). The results suggest that girls possess superior phonological skills on entry to school at age 5 years, are better able to utilise their literacy learning experiences to bring them to bear on phonological awareness tasks, and have a lower variance ratio than boys do. There is some support in this study for the notion that girls have somewhat better developed phonological loop memory skills than boys do.

‘victor-martinelli’

Victor Martinelli

victor.martinelli@um.edu.mt

Abstract

Sex differences in phonological sensitivity and awareness were assessed using

well-established linguistic measures in translation in a two-year longitudinal

study on a sample of 136 children during their first two years at school. Girls

obtained significantly higher means on a number of measures of phonological

sensitivity but not on tests of ability (Coloured Progressive Matrices) (Cohen’s

d with Hedges adjustment for sample size = .18). The results suggest that girls

possess superior phonological skills on entry to school at age 5 years, are better

able to utilise their literacy learning experiences to bring them to bear on

phonological awareness tasks, and have a lower variance ratio than boys do.

There is some support in this study for the notion that girls have somewhat

better developed phonological loop memory skills than boys do.

Sex differences and variability in

phonological sensitivity among primary

school children

Vol:7 No.1 2013

http://www.mreronline.org

Faculty of Education

University of Malta

Msida MSD 2080

Malta

Introduction

Many contemporary researchers posit the view that there are no differences or only

small differences between the sexes in terms of ability. Halpern (2000) clearly states

that “sex differences have not been found in general intelligence” (p. 218). This view

is shared by other researchers like Brody (1992), Jensen (1998), Lubinski (2000) and

Mackintosh (1998). It is therefore established that there are no notable sex

differences in general verbal ability, arithmetic, abstract reasoning, spatial

visualisation and memory span (Feingold, 1988, 1992). On the other hand, males

score higher than females on tests of general knowledge, mechanical reasoning and

mental rotations while females score higher than males on tests of language use

(Caplan, Crawford, Hyde & Richardson, 1997; Halpern, 2000; Jacklin, 1989; Kimura,

1999; Linn & Hyde, 1989; Linn & Petersen, 1985, Lynn & Irwing, 2004). Even so,

these differences have been decreasing over these last generations and it is only in

later adolescence that they are marked to any degree (Feingold, 1988). One

possibility is that sex differences in verbal learning are minimal or nonexistent during

elementary school years, emerging only after puberty when hormonal and

psychosocial influences increase (Kramer, Delis, Kaplan, O’Donnell & Prifitera,

1997). If sex differences were present in young children, it would be important to

determine if the differences between boys and girls remain constant or if they

fluctuate as a function of age or environmental factors.

Measures of phonological sensitivity are widely held to be good predictors of later

literacy (Bryant, MacLean, Bradley & Crossland, 1990; Ellis, 1990). Phonological

sensitivity can be considered to constitute a hierarchy of skills (Adams, 1990;

Stanovich, 1992). Higher levels of phonological sensitivity require more explicit

analysis of smaller sized phonological units (e.g., phonemes), and more primitive

levels of phonological sensitivity require shallower levels of analysis of larger sound

units (e.g., syllables). If one were to adhere to this view, phoneme segmentation,

phoneme counting, and phoneme reversal tasks represent the higher levels of

sensitivity, whereas rhyming or syllable segmentation tasks represent levels that are

more primitive. Sensitivity to phonemes is often assumed to have special status in

the relation between phonological sensitivity and reading both because it is at this

level that graphemes correspond to speech sounds in reading and because individual

phonemes do not have a separable physical reality (Lonigan, Burgess, Anthony &

Barker, 1998). It is only later when phonological awareness is applied directly to

reading and spelling that phonemes start having a separate psychological reality.

Sex differences in phonological awareness

There is a burgeoning literature on various aspects of sex differences in children’s

early literacy but little that is specifically about phonological awareness. Numerous

studies support the view that generally, young girls possess higher literacy skills than

boys (Coley, 2001; Gambell & Hunter, 1999; Lummis & Stevenson, 1990; Phillips,

Norris, Osmond, & Maynard, 2002; Soderman, Chhikara, & Kuo, 1999) but this is by

no means supported universally. For example, Davies & Brember (1999) suggest that

gender differences occur only among higher-achieving students. Given the general

lack of consensus about the issue and the fact that differences found are often limited

to specific aspects of ability or achievement that may be circumscribed by issues such

surprising that the topic retains a degree of interest among researchers.

Ready, LoGerfo, Burkam & Lee (2005) provide some inkling as to the possible

differences in phonological skills found between boys and girls at an early age.

Their study investigated gender differences in a large sample of kindergarten children

(8,701 boys and 8,182 girls) and found that girls came to school with an early

advantage. Their findings suggest that not only did girls in their sample enter

kindergarten with somewhat better developed literacy skills but they also learned

slightly more than boys did over the kindergarten year. They attributed these

differences to generally more positive behaviours. Part of their study specifically

included a basic literacy skills assessment that measured print familiarity, letter

recognition, beginning and ending sounds, rhyming sounds and word recognition.

All measures are reported to have had high reliabilities. They report that on average,

girls entered kindergarten with better-developed literacy skills. There was a

difference in the autumn literacy skills assessment that suggested a 0.14 SD (.14

effect size) female advantage at kindergarten entry. Just six months later during the

spring literacy assessments, the female advantage widened to 0.19 SD (.19 effect

size) with girls having improved their literacy skills faster than boys did. These

gender differences are indeed small even if they widen somewhat over the

kindergarten year (from 0.14 to 0.19 SD), but they exist nevertheless. Investigating

small changes in small differences may be seen as an academic exercise but one

cannot ignore the sample size of over 16,000 data sets and the possibility of these

small gender differences growing incrementally into larger gender differences over

time, by age 16 years.

behaviour and emergent literacy. In their study, subtests from the Developmental

Skills Checklist (DSC; CTB, 1990) were combined with other measures of expressive

and receptive language skills to create an emergent literacy measure. What is of

particular interest is that this composite measure comprised, along with the above

measures, tests of phonological awareness and print awareness. These included

measures of letter recognition (assessed by children’s ability to name upperand

lower-case letters), auditory skills (assessed by children’s ability to identify same

versus different sounds), word and sentence segmentation skills, rhyme skills and

knowledge of print (knowledge about structure and format of words, differentiating

print from pictures and numbers and the identification of components of writing). On

a composite measure, albeit adulterated somewhat by other measures for expressive

and receptive language, girls outperformed boys once again. In the article by

Doctoroff et al. (2006), scores are expressed as z scores but when converted to

standard scores, girls obtained 101 scores and boys 98 scores in this emergent literacy

measure. The computed effect size expressed in terms of Cohen’s d was .24, similar

to the effect size reported by Ready et al. (2005) but this was probably somewhat

inflated due to the inclusion of the receptive and expressive language measures.

Before moving on to the research questions posited by this present article and

describing the methodology used, one must make mention of some other concepts

relevant to this study. One such concept is the phonological loop. Most of the

measures administered in this study and indeed in most studies of phonological

awareness relied to a greater or lesser degree on auditory memory. The phonological

loop consists of a short-term store that is reported to be in place at around age 3 years,

one that retains verbal material in terms of its phonological characteristics but also

one that is subject to rapid decay (Baddeley, Gathercole & Papagno, 1998; Ford &

Silber, 1994; Gathercole & Adams, 1993; Gathercole & Pickering, 1999). Although

Vallar & Baddeley (1984) posit the view that the decay of representations in the

memory store can be counteracted by serial subvocal rehearsal, this strategic

rehearsal process does not emerge typically until about 7 years of age (Gathercole &

Hitch, 1993). This means that any phonological assessment of children under age 6 is

likely to tap this phonological loop directly. Ardilla & Roselli (1994) and Gathercole

& Pickering (2000) report some minor sex differences for central executive mediated

items but none for phonological loop mediated memory items in their batteries of

measures. Kramer et al. (1997) document some semantic mediated sex differences in

recall. This is suggestive of possible underlying cognitive mechanisms for those sex

differences reflecting greater overall learning efficiency on the part of the girls.

The last issue to be discussed with reference to sex differences concerns variability.

Feingold (1992) makes the case that while there are differences between the sexes on

various cognitive measures, males are more variable than females in IQ. He

concludes that “cognitive sex differences in central tendency must be considered in

concert with sex differences in variability to understand how effect sizes vary with

level of performance” (p. 79).

The present study

The present study was designed to examine whether the superiority of the girls in

reading and writing at age 9 years (Martinelli & Lynn, 2005) can be traced to their

performance on measures of phonological awareness, in spite of girls in the same

sample having no particularly higher cognitive skills than boys do. It is also

attempting to consider the possibility that measures of phonological sensitivity that

have been causally linked to later literacy (Bus & van Ijzendoom, 1999; Lundberg,

Frost, & Petersen, 1988; Schneider & Ennemoser, 2000) also show a sex bias. Girls

may be better equipped to achieve successful literacy than boys are and boys may

show a higher variance ratio than girls.

This study posits the following research questions;

(a) Do girls show superior performance over males on measures of phonological

sensitivity and awareness?

(b) Do females in the participating sample progress better than boys on the

acquisition of these causal skills over a two-year period between first entry to school

at age 5 years and the end of their first formal year at school at age 7 years?

(c) In view of the fact that performance on most of these measures of literacy also

depends on the phonological loop described by Gathercole & Pickering (2000), are

girls superior to boys on those measures that tax this phonological loop heavily?

(d) Is male variability higher than female variability on any of the abilities and skills

assessed?

Method

Participants

This study followed a group of 136 Maltese nursery aged children through nursery into

the first year of primary school. Sample attrition over the two years was minimal. The

children in this study attended seven schools that were chosen on the basis of the

schools having obtained an average score on the primary schools’ rankings, which are

based on the annual results of national tests taken by children in Years 4, 5 and 6

(ages 8, 9 and 10 years). The children were all born in the first three months of the

year. They all came from socio-economic classes 3 to 7 of the Office for National

Statistics’ Socio-economic Classification (2004). All children born in that period

were invited to participate in the study through a letter to their parents after

permission to do so was sought from the Education Division, Malta (as it was known

then). No parents objected to the study but in those cases where it was found that

children were being stressed by the procedure due to their unfamiliarity with the

assessor, the assessment was stopped. In fact, out of a possible 167 pupils, 136 (81%)

started to participate in the study. Another three children stopped before all the

measures could be administered in the second year. Table 1 shows the number and

average age of the participants during the various stages of the study and the bracketed

figures indicate the standard deviation of the participants’ age at the different times of

testing.

Table 1: Average age of participants at each stage in the study

Testing Boys Girls Total Mean age in months

Kindergarten cycle 1 71 65 136 56.4 (.66)

Kindergarten cycle 2^71 65 136 62.0 (.66)

Year 1 cycle 1 70 64 134 68.3 (.90)

Year 1 cycle 2 69 64 133 74.4 (.90)

Measures

The ages of four and five years are developmentally important ages to observe and

investigate children’s phonological development. Four year-olds are an important group

to investigate as the age range 4 to 6 years covers the period prior to the onset of literacy

to the beginning of formal literacy. It is highly unlikely that children would be in

possession of any formal reading skills at age 4 years but towards the end of Year 1 (in

the Maltese context), most would be expected to master the basics of simple word

reading even if they would not have attained fluency.

A battery of tests for phonological sensitivity in Maltese was administered during the

first year of the study. This was administered in two stages with the more difficult

measures being administered in the second part of the school year. In the second year,

this procedure was repeated all over again. Other measures that were meant to act as

control variables in this study were also administered and these included measures of

intelligence, language ability and short-term verbal and visual memory. Measures for

short-term memory were administered twice but those for intelligence and language

ability only once. This design controlled for the effect of age on performance, as

participants’ chronological age range on any measure was never more than three months.

Measures of phonological sensitivity

Concerning phonological sensitivity, children were assessed on a number of tasks.

These included measures of implicit and explicit sensitivity to phonemes. Within

implicit phonological sensitivity, children were assessed for awareness of rhyme and

alliteration. Within explicit phonological sensitivity, children were assessed along a

scale that constituted three broad levels of explicit phonological detection. These

comprised awareness and identification of phonemes in words, segmentation of short

words into phonemes and longer words into syllables and finally the manipulation of

phonemes. The use of pseudo words in some of the measures was used to help children

concentrate better on constituent sounds of words, rather than on meaning (McNeil &

Stone, 1965). All phonological awareness tests were administered in Maltese.

All measures were modelled on other measures used in the established literature and

were administered in close conformity with the prescribed procedures. The provenance

of the tests is detailed in table 2 below. Only the original studies are being listed in a bid

to keep the list short and avoid the confusion of names and procedures that developed

after these measures were modified in subsequent studies.

Table 2: Test provenance

Phonological sensitivity / awareness measures Featured in or published

Rhyme and Alliteration Oddity tests Bradley (1990)

Combined Phoneme Oddity tests Cataldo & Ellis (1988)

Syllable Counting test (tapping) Mann & Liberman (1984)

Syllable Counting test (counters) Elkonin (1973)

Letter-Sound Knowledge Reason & Boote, 1986

Original Rhyme test Ellis (1990)

Phoneme Segmentation test Ellis (1990)

Phoneme Deletion test Bryant, MacLean, Bradley &

Crossland (1990)

Phoneme Isolation test Wallach & Wallach (1976)

Phoneme Reversal test Lundberg, Olofsson & Wall (1980)

Measures peripheral to this study

Intelligence Coloured Progressive Matrices

(Raven, 1956)

Expressive language British Picture Vocabulary Scale

(Dunn, Dunn, Whetton, & Pintilie,

1982)

Receptive language Sentence Comprehension Test

Revised (Wheldall, Mittler &

Hobsbaum, 1987)

Concepts about print Sand concepts about print test (Clay,

1972)

(1984)

Visual memory Object span test Katz, Shankweiler & Liberman

(1981)

Control measures

A number of measures of intelligence, language (expressive and receptive language and

sentence comprehension), concepts about print, and verbal and visual short-term

memory were administered as control measures in order to be able to compare the sexes

on constructs other than those of phonological sensitivity. The two measures for short

term verbal and visual memory were administered twice over the two-year period, as

was the concepts-aboutprint test but this was administered twice in one year, at the

beginning and end of Year 1 as the test was deemed too difficult to administer in the

Kindergarten year. The majority of the tests for phonological sensitivity possessed

good internal consistency in the region of .7 to .8 and this level of consistency was

eminently comparable to the internal consistency figures quoted for the original

measures when these figures were reported.

Results

The initial results are shown in Table 3.1 through to 3.4. This gives the means and

standard deviations for boys’ and girls’ performance on each of the tests administered

over the two Kindergarten cycles and the two Year 1 cycles. This is followed by d

values (the differences between the means divided by the pooled standard deviations

Cohen’s d based on sample size using Hedges adjustment through ESG 2.3

(Devilly, 2004)) for the differences between the mean scores of the boys and girls.

The last column on the right gives the t-values for the statistical significance (one

tailed) of the differences between the boys’ and girls’ performance. The Bonferroni

adjustment to maintain overall alpha < .05 for control of Type I error for all pairwise

comparisons as described in Green & Salkind (2005) was applied to all values of

statistical significance reducing the number of prima facie significant findings. In

calculating the values of t, Levene’s test for equality of variance was run and showed

that the variances were not significantly different for most of the tests; the assumption

of equality of variances was justified in most cases. When this was not justified, the

adjusted t value was registered.

The first research question concerned the possible female superiority in performance

on measures of phonological sensitivity and awareness. Invariably, girls obtained

higher mean scores on all the tests, even if they performed statistically significantly

better than boys on fewer measures after correction for Type I errors. On some tests,

the d value indicated that the difference was close to half a standard deviation and on

these measures, girls did statistically significantly better than boys. This was

particularly true of measures of phonological sensitivity administered in the second

year of the study. Girls seem to have significantly better phonological skills that are

causally associated with literacy development. Girls’ sentence comprehension skills,

as assessed by the Sentence Comprehension Test (Revised) (Wheldall et al., 1987)

were superior to boys’ skills on the same construct. Of note is the fact that the

difference between the boys and girls on the Coloured Progressive Matrices (Raven,

1956) were not statistically significant although girls obtained a slightly higher mean.

In other non-phonological measures like the memory tasks (Object Span and

Sentence Repetition tasks), girls’ higher mean scores were not statistically significant

in the first year of the study for both measures and continued being non-significant in

the second year of the study. Likewise, there were no significant differences

registered for the British Picture Vocabulary Scale (Dunn et al., 1982) in the first year

of the study (this being the only time it was administered).

Table 3.1: Sex differences on phonological sensitivity tests (Kindergarten year)

School Year Phonemic Sensitivity Tests Sex N Mean SD d T 1 tailed

Kindergarten cycle 1

Final Rhyme Oddity-Real Boys 71 0.54 1.14 .51 3.00**

Age Girls 65 1.20 1.44 56.4 (.66) Final Rhyme Oddity-Pseudo Boys 71 0.41 0.95 .46 2.72ns Girls 65 0.95 1.34 Medial Rhyme Oddity-Real Boys 71 0.42 1.04 .37 2.13ns Girls 65 0.91 1.55 Medial Rhyme Oddity-Pseudo Boys 71 0.30 0.85 .37 2.13ns Girls 65 0.68 1.19 Alliteration Oddity-Real Boys 71 1.37 2.37 .40 2.32ns Girls 65 2.46 3.06 Alliteration Oddity-Pseudo Boys 71 0.82 1.76 .38 2.18ns Girls 65 1.62 2.42 Combined Phoneme Oddity Initial-Real

Boys 71 0.37 0.80 .42 2.46ns Girls 65 0.80 1.20 Combined Phoneme Oddity Initial-Pseudo

Boys 71 0.27 0.84 .34 2.00ns Girls 65 0.60 1.07 Combined Phoneme Oddity Final-Real

Boys 71 0.17 0.59 .36 2.05ns Girls 65 0.45 0.94 Combined Phoneme Oddity Final-Pseudo

Boys 71 0.11 0.46 .41 2.31ns Girls 65 0.42 0.95 Combined Phoneme Oddity Medial-Real

Boys 71 0.14 0.59 .16 0.90ns Girls 65 0.25 0.77 Combined Phoneme Oddity Medial-Pseudo

Boys 71 0.14 0.54 .07 0.44 ns Girls 65 0.18 0.61 Phoneme Isolation-Initial Boys 71 1.24 1.69 .26 1.52 ns Girls 65 1.71 1.89 Phoneme Isolation-Medial Boys 71 0.28 1.03 .36 2.09ns Girls 65 0.74 1.46 Phoneme Isolation-Final Boys 71 0.42 1.06 .32 1.84ns Girls 65 0.83 1.47

Memory Span Tests

Sentence Repetition test Boys 71 4.97 1.31 .20 1.18ns Girls 65 5.22 1.08 Object Span test Boys 71 7.66 1.93 .12 0.70ns Girls 65 7.89 1.87

Table 3.2 Sex differences on phonological sensitivity tests (Kindergarten year)

School Year Phonemic Sensitivity Tests Sex N Mean SD d T 1 tailed

Kindergarten cycle 2

Phoneme Segmentation Boys 71 0.38 1.28 .24 1.42ns

Age Girls^65 0.74^ 1.63 62.0 (.66) Syllable Counting-Tapping Boys 71 7.44 3.26 .22 1.27ns Girls 65 8.09 2.73 Syllable Counting-Elkonin Boys 71 6.14 3.57 .29 1.67ns Girls 65 7.11 3.15 Phoneme Deletion-Initial Boys 71 0.13 0.90 .13 0.86ns Girls 65 0.25 0.92 Phoneme Deletion-Final Boys 71 0.14 0.52 .31 1.77ns Girls 65 0.38 1.00 Letter-Sound Knowledge Boys 71 3.04 3.93 .43 2.50ns Girls 65 4.80 4.28 Original Rhyme Boys 71 0.35 0.83 .02 0.13ns Girls 65 0.37 0.65 Phoneme Reversal Boys 71 0.01 0.12 .11 0.66ns Girls 65 0.03 0.17

Language Tests British Picture Vocabulary Test Boys 71 31.93 10.12 .05 0.32ns Girls 65 32.49 10.41 Sentence Comprehension Test Boys 71 27.30 5.16 .50 2.92** Girls 65 29.66 4.19 Ability Test Ravens Coloured Progressive Matrices

Boys 71 14.01 3.73 .18 0.89ns Girls 65 14.52 2.89

Table 3.3: Sex differences on phonological sensitivity tests (Year 1)

School Year Phonemic Sensitivity Tests Sex N Mea n

SD d T 1 tailed

Year 1 cycle 1 Final Rhyme Oddity-Real Boys 70 1.60 1.47 .48 2.76ns Age Girls 64 2.30 1.46 68.3 (.90) Final Rhyme Oddity-Pseudo Boys 70 1.34 1.33 .56 3.26*** Girls 64 2.13 1.45 Medial Rhyme Oddity-Real Boys 70 1.36 1.56 .59 3.45*** Girls 64 2 .27 1.48 Medial Rhyme Oddity-Pseudo Boys 70 1.19 1.42 .54 3.14*** Girls 64 2.00 1.58 Alliteration Oddity-Real Boys 70 4.26 3.12 .69 3.99*** Girls 64 6.28 2.68 Alliteration Oddity-Pseudo Boys 70 3.53 3.00 .57 3.32*** Girls 64 5.16 2.64 Combined Phoneme Oddity Initial-Real

Boys 70 1.66 1.53 .47 2.73ns Girls 64 2.44 1.77 Combined Phoneme Oddity Initial-Pseudo

Boys 70 1.40 1.50 .51 2.98*** Girls 64 2.20 1.63 Combined Phoneme Oddity Final-Real

Boys 70 1.36 1.42 .38 2.23ns Girls 64 1.89 1.37 Combined Phoneme Oddity Final-Pseudo

Boys 70 1.31 1.45 .41 2.38ns Girls 64 1.92 1.51

Combined Phoneme Oddity Medial-Real

Boys 70 1.20 1.24 .33 1.90ns Girls 64 1.63 1.35 Combined Phoneme Oddity Medial-Pseudo

Boys 70 1. 13 1.34 .24 1.41ns Girls 64 1.45 1.32 Phoneme Isolation-Initial Boys 70 3.26 1.90 .51 3.01*** Girls 64 4.13 1.42 Phoneme Isolation-Medial Boys 70 1.84 1.88 .46 2.66ns Girls 64 2.72 1.93 Phoneme Isolation-Final Boys 70 2.00 1.74 .32 1.88ns Girls 64 2.59 1.92

Knowledge About Print Test Sand Boys 70 7.16 3.28 .43 2.48ns Girls 64 8.47 2.79

Memory Span Tests Sentence Repetition test Boys 70 5.99 0.99 .19 1.08ns Girls 64 6.17 1.02 Object Span test Boys 70 8.44 1.80 .35 2.04ns Girls 64 9.05 1.62

Table 3.4: Sex differences on phonological sensitivity tests (Year 1)

School Year Phonemic Sensitivity Tests Sex N Mea n

SD d T 1 tailed

Year 1 cycle 2 Phoneme Segmentation Boys 69 3.48 1.84 .32 1.84ns Age Girls^64 4.03^ 1.62 74.4 (.90) Syllable Counting-Tapping Boys 69 9.07 2.07 .08 .48ns Girls 64 9.22 1.33 Syllable Counting-Elkonin Boys 69 8.74 2.49 .07 .31ns Girls 64 8.90 1.79 Phoneme Deletion-Initial Boys 69 1.74 1.90. 09 .51ns Girls 64 1.91 1.89 Phoneme Deletion-Final Boys 69 2.10 1.93 .38 2.22ns Girls 64 2.84 1.92 Letter-Sound Knowledge Boys 69 11.61 1.34 .15 .87ns Girls 64 11.80 1.14 Original Rhyme Boys 69 1.72 1.48 .47 2.75** Girls 64 2.50 1.7 6 Phoneme Reversal Boys 69 0.70 1.51 .33 1.89ns Girls 64 1.27 1.94

Knowledge About Print Test Sand Boys 69 11.61 1.34 .13 1.21ns Girls 64 11.80 1.14

The second research question considered the accelerated progress in phonological

awareness tasks of the girls over the boys during the two years of the study. On the

phonological sensitivity tasks, girls generally gained on boys with more significantly

superior performance in the second year than in the first year. Therefore, for

example, in the first year, girls performed non-significantly better on all measures of

phonological sensitivity except on the Final Rhyme Oddity (Real) test. In the second

year, they outdid boys by reaching significant superiority on seven phonological

sensitivity tasks as shown in table 3.1 and 3.3. There seems to be a clear pattern here

with girls not only doing better than boys by the second year of the study, but also

doing significantly better on a number of phonological sensitivity tasks. Table 4

shows that girls outperformed boys on all measures of phonological awareness over

the two years of the study with Cohen’s d difference increasing over the two years

with the exception of the Final Rhyme Oddity-Real word task, both of the Syllable

Counting tasks, the Phoneme Deletion-initial and the Letter-Sound Knowledge tasks.

With reference to the third research question involving the difference in tasks taxing

the phonological loop, there was little direct evidence to support the notion that girls

showed superiority on such tasks as assessed by the sentence repetition measure that

constituted part of the battery of measures administered.

Table 4: Comparison of girls’ performance over boys’ performance using the ds value on measures of phonological sensitivity by year and comparison of the magnitude of this value between the two sexes over the two years

Phonological Sensitivity Tests

Kindergarten Year

Year 1 Kindergarten Year

Year 1

Sex N Mean N Mean Boys /Girls KG d

Boys /Girls Year 1 d

Difference in d between Year 1 and KG Final Rhyme Oddity-Real

Boys 71 0.54 70 1.60 .51 .48 0.03 Girls 65 1.20 64 2.30 Final Rhyme Oddity-Pseudo

Boys 71 0.41 70 1.34 .46 .56 0.1 Girls 65 0.95 64 2.13 Medial Rhyme Oddity-Real

Boys 71 0.42 70 1.36 .3 7 .59 0.22 Girls 65 0.91 64 2.27 Medial Rhyme Oddity-Pseudo

Boys 71 0.30 70 1.19 .37 .54 0.17 Girls 65 0.68 64 2.00 Alliteration Oddity-Real

Boys 71 1.37 70 4.26 .40 .69 0.29 Girls 65 2.46 64 6.28 Alliteration Oddity-Pseudo

Boys 71 0.82 70 3.53 .38 .57 0.19 Girls 65 1.62 64 5.16 Combined Phoneme Oddity Initial-Real

Boys 71 0.37 70 1.66 .42 .47 0.05 Girls 65 0.80 64 2.44

Combined Boys 71 0.27 70 1.40 .34 .51 0.17

Phoneme Oddity Initial-Pseudo

Girls 65 0.60 64 2.20

Combined Phoneme Oddity Final-Real

Boys 71 0.17 70 1.36 .36 .38 0.02 Girls 65 0.45 64 1.89

Combined Phoneme Oddity Final-Pseudo

Boys 71 0.11 70 1.31 .41 .41 0 Girls 65 0.42 64 1.92

Combined Phoneme Oddity Medial-Real

Boys 71 0.14 70 1.20 .16 .33 0.17 Girls 65 0.25 64 1.63

Combined Phoneme Oddity Medial-Pseudo

Boys 71 0.14 70 1.13 .07 .24 0.17 Girls 65 0.18 64 1.45

Phoneme Isolation-Initial

Boys 71 1.24 70 3.26 .26 .51 0.25 Girls 65 1.71 64 4.13 Phoneme Isolation-Medial

Boys 71 0.28 70 1.84 .36 .46 0.1 Girls 65 0.74 64 2.72 Phoneme Isolation-Final

Boys 71 0.42 70 2.00 .32 .32 0 Girls 65 0.83 64 2.59 Phoneme Segmentation

Boys 71 0.38 69 3.48 .24 .32 0.08

Girls 65 0.74 64 4.03 Syllable CountingTapping

Boys 71 7.44 69 9.0 7 .22 .08 0.14

Girls 65 8.09 64 9.22 Syllable Counting-Elkonin

Boys 71 6.14 69 8.74 .29 .07 0.22

Girls 65 7.11 64 8.9 Phoneme Deletion-Initial

Boys 71 0.13 69 1.74 .13 .09 0.04

Girls 65 0.25 64 1.91 Phoneme Deletion-Final

Boys 71 0.14 69 2.1 .31 .38 0.07

Girls 65 0.38 64 2.84 Letter-Sound Knowledge

Boys 71 3.04 69 11.61 .43 .15 0.28

Girls 65 4.8 64 11.8 Original Rhyme Boys 71 0.35 69 1.72 .02 .47 0.45 Girls 65 0.37 64 2.5 Phoneme Reversal

Boys 71 0.01 69 0.7 .11 .33 0 .22 Girls 65 0.03 64 1.27

The fourth research question concerned the variance ratio of the boys and the girls.

In the first year of the study, the boys in the sample showed more variability on

relatively fewer phonological awareness tasks. As shown in table 5, there is a

substantial increase in variance ratios (boys’ SD

/girls’ SD

) from one year to the

next with only two measures, the Sentence Repetition test and the Original Rhyme

test showing less variability in the second year. Initially boys’ variability is less than

girls’ variability. Boys showed higher variability on only five of 25 measures in the

first year. However, there is a steady trend of increasing variability with boys

showing more variance than girls on 14 of the 25 phonological sensitivity measures

administered in the second year of the study. Boys’ higher variability is also evident

on the Ravens Matrices, the Sentence Comprehension Test (Revised) and Sand –

Concepts about Print Test. So generally, in keeping with Feingold’s (1992)

findings, boys showed substantially more variability in their scores than girls did.

To put the results in perspective, girls generally outperformed boys in all measures of

phonological awareness achieving statistically significant higher scores as they

progressed from Kindergarten to Year 1 and the difference between them increased

over the two years of the study with the effect size increasing for the girls. At the

same time as girls were scoring higher than boys on virtually all measures with

increasing effect size, boys were developing more variability generally. Thus, over

the two years of this study, boys showed more variability than girls did in a good

number of the phonological awareness tasks. These differences in variability are

shown in table 5 below with boys’ higher variance ratios being underlined.

Table 5: Variability estimates

Year 1 SD Year 1 Variance ratio

Year 2 SD Year 2 Variance ratio

Final Rhyme Oddity-Real Boys 1.14 0.63 1.47 1.01

Girls 1.44 1.46

Final Rhyme Oddity-Pseudo Boys 0.95 0.50 1.33 0.84

Girls 1.34 1.45

Medial Rhyme Oddity-Real Boys 1.04 0.45 1.56 1.11

Girls 1.55 1.48

Medial Rhyme Oddity-Pseudo Boys 0.85 0.51 1.42 0.81

Girls 1.19 1.58

Alliteration Oddity-Real Boys 2.37 0.60 3.12 1.36

Girls 3.06 2.68

Alliteration Oddity-Pseudo Boys 1.76 0.53 3.00 1.29

Girls 2.42 2.64

Combined Phoneme Oddity Initial-Real

Boys 0.8 0.44 1.53 0.75

Girls 1.2 1.77

Combined Phoneme Oddity Initial-Pseudo

Boys 0.84 0.62 1.5 0.85

Girls 1.07 1.63

Combined Phoneme Oddity Final-Real

Boys 0.59 0.39 1.42 (^) 1.07 Girls 0.94 1.37 Combined Phoneme Oddity Final-Pseudo Boys 0.46 0.23 1.45 0.92 Girls 0.95 1.51 Combined Phoneme Oddity Medial-Real Boys 0.59 0.59 1.24 0.84 Girls 0.77 1.35 Combined Phoneme Oddity Medial-Pseudo Boys 0.54 0.78 1.34 1.03 Girls 0.61 1.32 Phoneme Isolation-Initial Boys 1.69 0.80 1.90 1.79 Girls 1.89 1.42 Phoneme Isolation-Medial Boys 1.03 0.50 1.88 0.95 Girls 1.46 1.93 Phoneme Isolation-Final Boys 1.06 0.52 1.74 0.82 Girls 1.47 1.92 Sentence Repetition test Boys 1.31 1.47 0.99 0.94 Girls 1.08 1.02 Object Span test Boys 1.93 (^) 1.07 1.80 (^) 1.23 Girls 1.87 1.62 Phoneme Segmentation Boys 1.28 0.62 1.84 1.29 Girls 1.63 1.62 Syllable Counting-Tapping Boys 3.26 1.43 2.07 2.42 Girls 2.73 1.33 Syllable Counting-Elkonin Boys 3.57 1.28 2.49 1.94

Girls 3.15 1.79

Phoneme Deletion-Initial Boys 0.9 0.96 1.90 1.01

Girls 0.92 1.89

Phoneme Deletion-Final Boys 0.52 0.27 1.93 (^) 1.01 Girls 1 1.92 Letter-Sound Knowledge Boys 3.93 0.84 1.34 1.38 Girls 4.28 1.14 Original Rhyme Boys 0.83 1.63 1.48 0.71 Girls 0.65 1.76 Phoneme Reversal Boys 0.12 0.50 1.51 0.61 Girls 0.17 1.94 British Picture Vocabulary Test Boys 10.12 0.95 Girls 1 0.41 Sentence Comprehension Test Boys 5.16 1.52 Girls 4.19 Ravens Coloured Progressive Matrices Boys 3.73 (^) 1.67 Girls 2.89 Sand 1 Boys 3.28 (^) 1.38 Girls 2.79 Sand 2 Boys 1.34 1.38 Girls 1.14

Discussion

The results contain some points of interest. It appears that three of the four research

questions have been answered clearly. Girls outperformed boys on all measures

administered without exception and in spite of the difference not always being

statistically significant, they performed better all round. This superior performance

appears to be in place at least as early as age 5 years when children in this study

entered Kindergarten and increased over the next year. Therefore, girls appeared to

be able to make better use of their educational opportunities to develop adequate

phonological sensitivity awareness to employ in their reading skills than boys were

able to do. Indeed, the female superiority in phonological awareness tasks and in

subsequent literacy assessments seems to be independent of their equal footing on the

non-verbal Coloured Progressive Matrices measure for cognitive abilities, in line with

similar findings reported in Lynn & Irwing (2004). Furthermore, these findings lend

support to the Ready et al. (2005) and Doctoroff et al. (2006) studies reporting that

girls enter kindergarten with better developed literacy skills if one considers the

causal importance of phonological awareness/sensitivity skills to later formal literacy.

In conformity with Feingold’s (1992) findings, boys’ scores in general seem to

possess more variability than those of the girls. In the case of this particular sample,

with increasing variability in boys’ scores and girls’ improving performance over the

two years, it appears that boys were generally achieving more scores that were varied.

It would appear that with high scores for girls all round but increased variability for

boys, the sex differences in phonological awareness were smaller at the right end of

the curve of distribution and larger at the left end of the distribution suggesting more

variance at the lower end of the scale for boys.

This study suffers from a number of limitations, these being the number of

participants in the study, the relative simplicity of the measures used and the brevity

in the sample of participants may be considered to be a limiting factor in terms of the

overall applicability and interpretation of the results. Concerning the relative lack of

sophistication of the measures used, it is evident that when the measures were

administered in the second year of the study, the scores approached normality in

terms of distribution of scores around a mean, something not evident in the first year.

The issue of test brevity is another methodological consideration. Technically

speaking, everything else being equal, longer tests afford better measures of the

constructs assessed by virtue of better sampling of the area assessed, but young

participants seriously risk being fatigued by measures that are too long, thereby

invalidating the assessment. These three issues need to be considered if any of the

limitations of this study were to be remedied in any significant way and the study

extended to a larger sample with measures that maximise children’s performance

whilst retaining normality in the score distribution.

In the situation where teachers in the first year of formal schooling set about providing

literacy experiences for their children, they have to keep in mind that that once formal

exposure to literacy starts, girls are better able than boys to capitalise on the learning

experience and maintain a lead over boys generally. Boys, on the other hand, not only

achieve somewhat lower scores but show a more varied profile in terms of capitalisation on

learning experiences, resulting in an overrepresentation in the lowest quartile of the class.

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