What does a deficit in phonological awareness impact?

A deficit in phonological awareness significantly impacts the ability to recognize sounds in spoken language, which is critical for developing reading and spelling skills. Phonological awareness involves the ability to hear, identify, and manipulate sounds in spoken words, including phonemes, syllables, and rhymes. When a child struggles with this skill, it hampers their capacity to segment words into individual sounds or blend sounds to form words.

This foundational skill is essential for later literacy development because it directly affects how a child can decode words when reading. If a child cannot recognize that the sounds /b/, /a/, and /t/ combine to form the word "bat," they will encounter challenges in reading and spelling.

In contrast, while the other options may relate to literacy skills, they do not directly stem from a deficit in phonological awareness. Arranging sentences, understanding meanings, and memorizing vocabulary involve different cognitive processes that are not solely reliant on recognizing sounds in spoken language.