One of the most frequent linguistic symptoms in children with specific language impairment (SLI) is the phonological deficit. Children with SLI also displayed low performances on phonological awareness tasks. However, the effect of SLI in phonological awareness development is not clear. The aim of this study is to search for the weight of phonological deficits in preschool students with SLI on meta-linguistic abilities such as phonological awa-reness. The sample included 24 preschoolers with SLI (脳 = 4.2 years old) and 26 preschoolers without SLI (脳 = 4.4 years old). Students were individually measured with a test for evaluating phonological simplification processes (TEPROSIF) and a test for assessing phonological meta-linguistic abilities (PDEHMF).
Results indicated a lack of relationship between phonological awareness abilities and phonological deficits in both control and experimental groups. Finally, all students with SLI who showed poor meta-linguistic abilities also displayed a severe phonological deficit.