AbstractThe overall aim of this study is to show how phonological awareness develops during the first school year and how this can be affected by different teaching materials and working methods. Two classes are compared in the study. One of the classes has digital teaching material and the other class has traditional teaching material. The study seeks to show to what extent there are differences between the groups? phonological awareness.

The aim of this study is to investigate the effect of an intervention that focuses on phonics, decoding, reading speed and phonological awareness for 8-9 year old children in reading difficulties. Participants were selected on the basis of screening test results in grade one (decoding and reading comprehension). The participants were divided into two groups, an intervention group (A1, n=10 children) and a control group (A2, n=10). A1 received 30 minutes of intense reading instruction every day for six weeks from special educational needs teachers on top of their usual classroom based reading instruction. The control group received only their usual classroom-based reading instruction.

It is not uncommon for math difficulties and reading difficulties to occur simultaneously. Despite this, math and reading difficulties are thought to have different cognitive profiles where math difficulties are linked to number sense; an innate ability to understand, approximate and manipulate both quantities and numerical information, whereas reading difficulties are linked to phonological ability; an innate ability to understand, create representations of and manipulate phonological information. A possible link between the difficulties is that phonological abilities also could affect mathematical ability. Support for this comes from studies where comorbid math and reading difficulties are associated with more severe difficulties in arithmetic ability compared to those with isolated math difficulties. The purpose of this study is to examine whether isolated math difficulties, isolated reading difficulties and comorbid math and reading difficulties can be linked to deficits in number sense, phonological ability or both of these, and whether comorbid math and reading difficulties differ in performance in mathematical tasks compared to isolated math difficulties for children in second grade.

In a phonological assessment, the aim is to obtain systematic and reliable data of a child's speech output, which can then serve as a basis for a decision on an appropriate intervention (Wolk & Meisler, 1998). Whether phonological assessment should be derived from an analysis of picture-naming or a conversation with the child, and whether the two methods for elicitation generate equivalent results, has been debated among clinicians and researchers for an extended time (Masterson, Bernhardt & Hofheintz, 2005).The aim of the present study was to compare two methods of speech elicitation for phonological assessment: spontaneous conversation and picture-naming, respectively. In the study, the procedures have been used when assessing children with phonological disorders as well as children with typical language development. The results are presented using two levels of phonological analysis; degree of phonological impairment, in terms of percentage of phonemes correct (PPC), and type of phonological impairment, in terms of phonological simplification processes. Eighteen (18) children participated in the study, nine (9) with phonological impairment (age 3;10 ? 5;11), and nine with typical phonologic development (age 3;2 ? 4;6).

It is not uncommon for math difficulties and reading difficulties to occur simultaneously. Despite this, math and reading difficulties are thought to have different cognitive profiles where math difficulties are linked to number sense; an innate ability to understand, approximate and manipulate both quantities and numerical information, whereas reading difficulties are linked to phonological ability; an innate ability to understand, create representations of and manipulate phonological information. A possible link between the difficulties is that phonological abilities also could affect mathematical ability. Support for this comes from studies where comorbid math and reading difficulties are associated with more severe difficulties in arithmetic ability compared to those with isolated math difficulties. The purpose of this study is to examine whether isolated math difficulties, isolated reading difficulties and comorbid math and reading difficulties can be linked to deficits in number sense, phonological ability or both of these, and whether comorbid math and reading difficulties differ in performance in mathematical tasks compared to isolated math difficulties for children in second grade.

International studies show that literacy skills have deteriorated among Swedish students. Empirical evidence states that before being able to learn to read it is important to have phonological awareness. From this perspective, an intervention study was launched to examine whether pupils´ phonological awareness could be enhanced through the work of a special model during a limited time. The aim of the study is to investigate whether six pupils in preschool develop phonological awareness based on Bornholmsmodellen during a limited period of time. The control group was made up of the remaining pupils in the preschool class.

Children with Reading and Writing Difficulties and Their Language and Cognitive AbilitiesA Comparison with Children with a Cochlear ImplantAbstractThe aim of this study was to examine the cognitive abilities that are important for reading in children with reading disabilities, children with a cochlear implantation and typically developed children. 64 children aged 10-12 years participated in the study. To answer the question at issue we used the following tests: Block Design from WISC III, PPVT III, TOWRE, SL 40 and a few chosen tests out of the SIPS battery. On tests of the lexical access children with reading disabilities performed at the same level as hearing children, while the children with a cochlear implant performed significantly lower. Test of the phonological and complex working memory showed that children with reading disabilities performed significantly higher than children with a cochlear implant, but at the same time lower than typically developed children on the test of phonological working memory.

This study investigated relationships between high level language functions and phonological working memory in adults by correlating results oftests in a test battery used for investigating subtle language disorders and digit span task results. Results of two digit span tasks were analyzed in relation to demographic factors. 103 subjects without neurological disease, 20 ? 79 years old, participated. Significant correlations were found between the digit span tasks and most of the tests.

The present study aims to investigate the phonological development of typically developing monolingual Swedish speaking children aged three to four years. The result could be used in the standardization of a new Phonological test material for clinical speech and language pathology assessments. One-hundred and thirty four children aged three and four years (73 girls and 61 boys) were assessed with the new material. The children were tested in kindergartens in three communities in southeastern Sweden. Their assessments were audio recorded, transcribed phonetically and analyzed with Percentage Phonemes Correct (PPC) and Percentage of Words Correct (PWC).

A new Phonological test, LINUS, for Swedish-speaking children between the ages of three and seven, has been developed at the speech and language pathology department at Linköping University. The aim of the present study was to create a reference manual for the long version of the new test. The participants in the present study were children between the ages of five to seven in a medium-sized municipality in the Northern part of Kalmar County, Sweden. In total, 124 native Swedish-speaking children (58 girls and 66 boys) with typical language development participated. The children were divided into two age groups, 5;0-5;11;31 and 6;0-6;11;31 years.

AbstractThe purpose of this paper is to investigate to what extent LS ? a standard screening test for dyslexia ?is also relevant for the purpose of finding second language students with dyslexia. Starting with an overview of recent studies in the field, I have analyzed texts from parts of the chosen material. After a brief presentation of the test, I have presented it from a second language point of view. Furthermore, I have analyzed the way in which the test measures phonological awareness, lexical accessibility and correctness in language.

The literature on spelling and spelling development suggests there is a strong relationship between spelling and phonology (Bruck & Treiman, 1990; Caravolas, Hulme & Snowling, 2001; Craig, 2006; Gindri, Keske-Soares & Mota, 2007). Spelling, however, is considerably less researched than reading (Caravolas, Humle & Snowling, 2001). Spelling difficulties are known to be more persistent in people with reading and writing disabilities, even when their reading has become acceptable (Høien & Lundberg, 1999) but more research is needed in this area. Assessment and detailed knowledge of the difficulties is of great importance in order to provide the appropriate help for children with reading and writing disabilities (Frisk, 2010; Magnusson, Nauclér, & Reuterskiöld, 2008). The purpose of the present study was to develop and try out a phonologically based spelling test for children, with focus on medial phonemes.

AbstractThe purpose of this paper is to investigate to what extent LS ? a standard screening test for dyslexia ?is also relevant for the purpose of finding second language students with dyslexia. Starting with an overview of recent studies in the field, I have analyzed texts from parts of the chosen material. After a brief presentation of the test, I have presented it from a second language point of view. Furthermore, I have analyzed the way in which the test measures phonological awareness, lexical accessibility and correctness in language.

The purpose of this study was to collect Swedish normative datafor Lundamaterialet for children aged 3:0-4:5 years. Another aim was toexamine the effectiveness of the test; if it elicits adequate responses fordeciding if a child has acquired a specific language structure or not.Normative data was collected for 195 children with typical languagedevelopment. Participants were recruited from pre-schools in themunicipalities of Göteborg, Mölndal, Härryda and Skövde. This studypresents normative data for 79 children constituting the three youngest halfyeargroups. Results show that the children had acquired more than half ofthe investigated phonological and grammatical structures and that the olderchildren had acquired more structures than the younger ones.

The present project is a first step towards a new Swedish assessment tool to examine phonological ability in preschool-aged children. The work consisted of developing a word list with words that was considered to reveal a child?s phonological ability and to try out the word list on pre-school children. The reason was to make sure that the words existed in the vocabulary of the children in the chosen ages. A word list consisting of 109 words, which convey relevant phonological information, was created.