Development and comparison of tasks for assessment of first phoneme of word in normal 5 to 6 year-old Persian-speaking children

Introduction: Phonological awareness skills are referred to awareness and manipulation of linguistic phonemes without semantics. One of important phonological awareness subtest is "phoneme awareness" that is evaluated by many tasks. The aim of this study was to development two sections of phoneme awareness (diagnosis of a word with different first phoneme and expressing word with same first phoneme) and then comparison of them in 5 to 6 year-old Persian-speaking children in Tehran. Materials and Methods: In this study, 100 normal 5 to 6 year-old Persian-speaking children (50 girls and 50 boys) were selected randomly. Children were mono linguistic and normal. Diagnosis of a word with different first phoneme and expressing word with same first phoneme was selected as a tool. Results: The results showed that both sections have appropriate validity and reliability. Mean of two sections was significantly different (diagnosis of a word with different first phoneme= 1.09 and expressing word with same first phoneme= 4.67) (P= 0.000). In addition, the mean scores of girls and boys were not statistically different. Conclusions: Both sections for assessment of first phoneme of word have good validity and reliability and the ability of children were different in two tasks, but girls and boys were same in performing of these tasks.