Attentional skills, developmental areas, and phonological awareness in children aged 5–6 years

Abstract

The assessment, detection, and early monitoring of attentional processes, psychomotor skills, and phonological awareness serve as crucial indicators to prevent developmental disorders such as attention deficit and dyslexia. This study aimed to establish the relationship between attentional skills, developmental areas (gross motor skills, fine-adaptive motor skills, hearing and language, personal-social), and phonological awareness in children aged 5–6 years. 122 randomly selected children underwent assessment for visual and auditory attention, developmental areas, and syllabic and phonemic phonological awareness. Attentional skills, evaluated through regression and visual and auditory Letter Cancellation Tests, indicated that half of the sample struggled with the tasks. Overall, phonological awareness performance was low in 36.9 %, moderate in 32 %, and high in 31.1 % of the evaluated children. Visual and auditory attention positively correlated with syllabic and phonemic awareness. The results suggest that both visual and auditory attention skills influence the acquisition of phonological awareness.