Phonological Processing vs. Phonemic Awareness: What Clinicians and Educators Need to Know

If you identify learning disabilities, diagnose oral language conditions, or teach children to read, phonological processing and phonemic awareness are important in your work. It’s vital to understand each skillset, how they’re assessed, and their impacts on learning and literacy.  

Here’s what to know about these separate but related capabilities. 

What Is Phonological Processing? 

Phonological processing is a group of thinking skills that includes these abilities:  

• phonological awareness – the ability to notice, recognize, and work with speech sounds 
• phonological memory – the ability to hold speech sounds in mind as you’re completing tasks 
• rapid automatized naming – the ability to quickly, accurately recall information you’ve heard 

These skills work together to make it possible for people to learn language, to decode and spell words, and to tell the difference between speech sounds. People use phonological processing when they rhyme or use alliteration, when they break sentences into words, and when they break words into syllables.

What Is Phonemic Awareness? 

Phonemic awareness is a subset of phonological processing skills. Phonemic awareness is the ability to identify and work with the individual sounds within words (phonemes). In English, there are 44 separate phonemes.  

Phonemic awareness includes these abilities: 

• isolating sounds, or identifying individual sounds within a word 
• blending sounds together to make a word 
• segmenting sounds, or breaking a word into its individual sounds 
• deleting, adding, or substituting sounds, such as replacing the /c/ sound with the /b/ sound to make the word “cat” into “bat.” 

Phonemic awareness is considered the most advanced aspect of phonological processing. 

Common Questions for Reading Professionals 

What’s the role of phonological processing and phonemic awareness in reading? 

Being able to hear and process speech sounds is very important as we learn to read. When we read, we look at letters. We match the letters to a sound we have heard. Then we blend the sounds into whole words.  

In the early stages of learning to read, the process of mapping a letter to a sound is slow. It takes effort. That’s because we’re literally building pathways between the part of our brain that sees and recognizes letters to the part of our brain that hears sounds, and from there to the part of our brain that stores the meanings of words.  

The more we read, the quicker we get at moving from letters to sounds to words. For some people, this process becomes automatic. For others, the brain pathways don’t form as easily. Something disrupts the brain’s ability to connect letters to sounds to words. Often, the difficulty lies with phonological processing or phonemic awareness. 

Learn more about phonics and the Science of Reading: Reading Assessment Resources 

What co-occurring conditions affect phonological processing and phonemic awareness? 

Several neurodevelopmental conditions can affect phonological processing and phonemic awareness, influencing the way students process word sounds, including: 

• attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), 
• auditory processing disorder (APD),  
• developmental language disorder (DLD), and 
• dyslexia. 

It’s possible to have more than one of these conditions at a time, making it harder for clinicians to tell where the effects of one condition stop and another starts (Bonti et al., 2024).  

People may also have other health conditions that disrupt phonological processing or phonemic awareness. For example, people who have had strokes or traumatic brain injuries sometimes have trouble with phonological processing afterward (Lice et al., 2024).  

Here’s a brief look at how these conditions may affect someone’s phonological processing and phonemic awareness.  

Interested in learning more? Read "Is It DLD or Dyslexia?".  

What Are the Practice Implications for a Multidisciplinary Team? 

Speech–language pathologists (SLPs) frequently assess phonological processing as part of a comprehensive evaluation when a patient or student has a possible language delay, auditory processing disorder, or phonological disorder. They may also play a role in evaluating students for reading readiness.  Assessing phonological skills can also help an SLP decide whether an augmentative alternative communication (AAC) device could help a student communicate more clearly or build better grammatical skills (Lorang et al, 2022).  

School psychologists and reading specialists may assess phonological processing and phonemic awareness as part of universal screening for dyslexia and reading difficulties in kindergarten. In some cases, school psychologists might need to differentiate between phonological processing issues and speech difficulties. These professionals might also delve more deeply into assessment when a student is at risk for dyslexia or other reading disorders.  

Key Messages

Phonological processing is the ability to perceive, remember, and manipulate speech sounds. Under the broad umbrella of phonological processing is a subset of skills known as phonemic awareness. These skills allow people to detect, recognize, and work with the sounds that make up words.  

Phonological processing and phonemic awareness are necessary for reading. They allow people to match letters to sounds and to blend sounds together to form words. Some neurodevelopmental conditions interfere with these abilities, especially dyslexia, developmental language disorder, auditory processing disorder, and ADHD.  

If a student or client has trouble with phonological processing or phonemic awareness, it’s important to assess comprehensively so you can identify which skills may be impaired and which are intact. When SLPs, school psychologists, OTs, and educators work together using specialized assessments, they can create a holistic understanding of the student’s or patient’s needs—which makes planning effective, evidence-based interventions so much easier.  

Download our most popular infographic of all time: Types of Phonological Processes