Eighty sighted male Ss participated in a study to determine the effect of the size of the braille cell on the rate of learning the names for braille symbols of letters of the alphabet (A-J and K-T). Study size (standard or large braille), test size (standard or large braille) and item set (A-J or K-T) were manipulated in a study-test procedure…

Two experiments are an attempt to provide a description of three commonly observed phenomena of recognition behavior for alphabet characters in terms of the mathematics of correlation. (Author/KM)

Precommunicative, semiphonetic, phonetic, transitional, and correct spelling are the developmental stages in the acquisition of spelling competency. Samples of children's early spelling patterns are presented. A system for classifying early spelling strategy is outlined. (DF)

Ten randomly picked children of prekindergarten age participated in a study that focused on whether feature analysis can be used as an aid in the recognition of the alphabet. The five children in the control group were introduced to the letters as a whole, while the five children in the experimental group were introduced to the whole letters but…

The ability of subjects to scan only one of two sets of items in short-term memory was investigated as a function of the similarity between the items in the two sets, the type of test used to evaluate retention of sets, and the number of items in each set. Results indicated that this one-set scan ability is limited by the capacity of short-term…

Examines the processing of physical and nominal features of letters by children from grades 1, 2, and 6. Examines processing strategies in relation to reading ability. (BD)

Skilled and less skilled beginning readers (n=54) were taught to read and define 10 printed pseudowords. Post-tests revealed that experimentals retaining spellings in memory as orthographic images remembered spellings better than controls who received comparable training without the memory component. (PN)

In four experiments, college students were presented with lists of either Armenian or English letters on a tachistoscope. The data indicate that extensive practice may be a necessary condition for capacity-free processing but may not be a necessary condition for involuntary processing. (Author/RD)

This experiment attempts to maximize orthographic while reducing semantic bases for processing by using lists of words from a single category (girl's first names), presenting the first letter as a cue for each word during both study and recall trials, and blocking together all words with the same first letter. (Author)

Reber found that subjects given neutral instructions to memorize letter strings from a synthetic language learned more about the underlying grammar than those instructed to try discovering the rules for letter order. Two experiments explored the relationship between implicit and explicit processes in the acquisition of complex knowledge.…

Describes two experiments which investigated the importance of immediate memory in explaining the defects of children with specific learning disabilities. A group of such children and group of normal children were compared with respect to their performance on an immediate memory task involving the recognition of letter trigrams. (Author/CS)

Kindergarten, second, and fourth grade children were asked to recall letter sequences on a task which required the use of a verbal strategy, a positional strategy, or either of the two strategies. (BD)

Mnemonic value of spellings in a paired-associate sound learning task was examined in first and second graders. Learning was fastest when correct spellings were seen or imagined. The preferred interpretation was that spellings are effective because they provide readers with orthographic images for symbolizing and storing sounds in memory.…

Three experiments were performed with young and aged female volunteers (mean ages approximately 25 and 70 years respectively) to evaluate coding ability with ordered and free recall tasks. (BD)

This study examined the effects of observational learning on preschoolers' attention to print, use of a questioning technique, and knowledge of the alphabet. Participating were 13 boys and 13 girls from a day care center at a community college, with a mean age of 4.3 years. Children were randomly assigned to one of three training conditions, each…