Our aim was to analyze the impact of the characteristics of occlusive versus fricative phonemes used in writing programs on the evolution of preschool children's writing. The participants were 39 5-year-old graphoperceptive children. Their intelligence, number of letters known, and phonological skills were controlled. Their writing was evaluated…

Two studies examined children's use of letter-name spelling strategies when target phoneme sequences match letter names with different degrees of precision. We examined Portuguese-speaking preschoolers' use of "h" (which is named /a'ga/ but which never represents those sounds) when spelling words beginning with /ga/ or variants of /ga/. We also…

This study investigated the concurrent contributions of phonology, orthography, and morphology to biliteracy acquisition in 78 Grade 1 Chinese-English bilingual children. Conceptually comparable measures in English and Chinese tapping phonological, orthographic, and morphological awareness were administered. Word reading skill in English and…

In the current study, we explore the influence of orthographic knowledge on phonological awareness in children with cochlear implants and compare developmental associations to those found for hearing children matched for word reading level or chronological age. We show an influence of orthographic knowledge on syllable and phoneme awareness in…

The relationship between written words and their pronunciation varies considerably among different orthographic systems, and these variations have repercussions on learning to read. Children whose languages have deep orthographies must learn to pronounce larger units, such as rhymes, morphemes, or whole words, to achieve the correct pronunciation…

Two nonword spelling and two orthographic awareness experiments examined production and awareness of sound-spelling relationships. Results of the nonword spelling experiments suggest people use phoneme-grapheme sized relationships when spelling nonwords. Orthographic awareness experiments suggest, under some circumstances, people can use larger…

Used cross-language blocking experiments to test the hypothesis that children learning to read inconsistent orthographies would show considerable flexibility in making use of spelling-sound correspondences at different unit sizes, whereas children learning to read consistent orthographies should mainly employ small-size grapheme-phoneme…

Describes a study designed to determine whether children's conceptualization of the component sounds in words is influenced by knowledge of the words' spelling using real and made-up words. Shows the phonemic segmentation skill may be a consequence of as much as a prerequisite to learning real words. (Author/BK)

Studied the symbolic knowledge of children, between three and five years of age who knew the alphabet but could not read, in associating letters of the alphabet with the letter's symbolic sounds. (21 references) (GLR)

Presents study exploring oral reading errors of normally developing readers to determine any developmental differences in learning phoneme-grapheme units; to discover if the grapheme representations of some phonemes are more difficult to read than others; and to replicate results reported by Fowler, et. al. Findings show most oral reading errors…

Describes a study which tested the notion that phonological recoding in important during reading acquisition. Children who had no measurable phonological recoding skills were matched to 28 children who had some skills in this domain and compared on reading performance at the end of grades one and two. Those with phonological recoding skills were…

Canadian English-Italian bilingual children were administered phonological, reading, spelling, syntactic, and working memory tasks in both languages. Results suggest English-Italian interdependence is most clearly related to phonological processing but may influence other linguistic modules. Exposure to a language with more predictable…

Examines the logographic stage assumption in reading models by studying how German-speaking first graders read and spell words and matched pseudowords. The findings indicate that logographic strategies are of limited importance when writing systems are phonologically transparent (as with German) and when instructional approaches do not withhold…

Examines the consonant substitution, sequencing, omission, and addition errors of severely reading disabled teenagers in recognizing consonants in orthographically regular nonwords, and compares the results with responses to identical stimuli by normal children of the same age and reading level groups. (Author/DJD)

Good and poor readers, 15- and 16-year-olds and adult literacy students, were compared in their ability to produce graphemic representations for four specific phonemes. Good readers were significantly better than poor readers at representing the critical phonemes, but intentional ambiguity had a similar effect on all. (MSE)