Phonological Awareness

The ability to recognize and manipulate the sound structures of spoken language, including syllables, rhymes, and individual phonemes. Phonological awareness is a foundational skill for reading and writing, and deficits in phonological processing are considered a core characteristic of dyslexia. Children with strong phonological awareness can identify that "cat" and "bat" rhyme, segment "dog" into three sounds (/d/-/o/-/g/), and blend sounds together to form words. In accessibility and education contexts, phonological awareness assessments are commonly used in dyslexia screening tools, though they require some existing language skills, which limits their use with pre-readers or across different languages.