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To clarify the importance of certain vocal-phonic skills in the development of speech and language, this study was designed to determine whether preschool articulatory defective children differ from normal speaking children in one language skill - their ability to synthesize phonemic components into whole words, An experimental group of 17 preschool articulatory defective children were employed as subjects. Three different tests of phonemic synthesis provided the basis for these comparisons: The Roswell-Chall Auditory Blending Test, The Auditory Test 2 from the Marion Monroe Reading Aptitude Test, and The Body Parts Test of Synthesis. The results of this investigation revealed that the control group demonstrated superior performance on all three tests of phonemic synthesis. It was also interesting to note the low correlations between the scores on the various tests. Implications of the results are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]