at 2 years, infants show first signs of phonological awareness, i.e., they are interested in word play, rhyming, and alliterations. phonological awareness does continue to develop until the first years of school. for example, only about half of the 4- and 5-year olds tested by liberman et al. (1974) were able to tap out the number of syllables in multisyllabic words, but 90% of the 6-year-olds were able to do so.