While readers will typically develop phonemic awareness as they learn to read, adults with a learning disability in reading, such as dyslexia, may not; dyslexia tends to persist into adulthood and may be related to a functional disruption in the brain.

Studies: **Bruck, 1992; **Pennington, Orden, Smith, Green, & Haith, 1990; Scarborough, 1984; **Shaywitz, Shaywitz, Pugh, Fulbright, Constable, Mencl, Shankweiler, Liberman, Skudlarski, Fletcher, Katz, Marchione, Lacadie, Gatenby, & Gore, 1998

Research Summary: Most of the studies that support this trend are robust, experimental studies. This trend is not labeled a principle, however, because the studies do not specifically evaluate students who qualify for ABE programs. The studies do not distinguish between those adults with a reading disability (dyslexics) who have completed high school and those who have not, for example. The studies are included in the research review because there is no reason to believe that ABE adults with dyslexia would perform any better on phonemic awareness tasks than the dyslexic adults in these studies.

In a series of four experiments, phonemic awareness among adults diagnosed with dyslexia was found to be extremely low (Pennington et al., 1990). In these studies, phonemic awareness was also found to be strongly related to word analysis ability among adult dyslexics. In a brain-imaging study of adults with dyslexia, they scored significantly lower than non-dyslexic adults on tasks that placed progressively greater demands on phonological processing ability. Their pattern of brain activity during these tasks indicated a disruption in the brain systems responsible for translating graphemes into phonemes (letters and letter combinations into sounds) (Shaywitz et al., 1998).

In two additional studies (one experimental and one descriptive), adults diagnosed with dyslexia during childhood, or who remembered significant reading difficulties during childhood, were found to continue to have poor phonemic awareness (PA) into adulthood (Bruck, 1992; Scarborough, 1984). Non-disabled good readers' PA improved as they got older and progressed through school, but this was not the case for those with dyslexia (Bruck, 1992). In fact, the level of PA found among dyslexics in this study is similar to the rudimentary phonemic awareness that another study reported for those who were illiterate (Scliar-Cabral, Morais, Nepomuceno, & Kolinsky, 1997).