Table 1 shows the mean performance with standard deviations for these
tasks for both age groups. Factor analyses on normalized scores from the
phonological awareness tasks (rhyme generation, oddity, blending, and
Rosner) revealed only one factor for 4-year-olds, which accounted for
50% of the variance and only one factor for 5-year-olds, which accounted
for 53% of the variance (see Table 3 for weights). Therefore, single phonemic
awareness macro-variables were created for each age group consisting of the
factor-weighted average of the phonemic awareness variables (rhyme generation,
oddity, blending, and Rosner) for use in regression analysis.