Abstract

In the present research we studied the emergence and development of metaphonological abilities in pre-school age children. 77 children, aged from 4 to 5,6 years, were individually tested with a battery of 12 metaphonological tasks requiring word correct judgement, syllabic and phonemic segmentation, rhyme judgement, initial syllabic and phonemic recognition, syllabic and phonemic blending, syllabic and phonemic word fluency. Results provide a global picture of the metaphonological development in kindergarten children with different times of acquisition across tasks. These data suggest that some metaphonological abilities are already acquired in the youngest children and others show a critical period of improuvment.