To expand our understanding of script-general and script-specific principles in the learning of letter names, we examined how three characteristics of alphabet letters -- their frequency in printed materials, order in the alphabet, and visual similarity to other letters -- relate to children's letter-name knowledge in four languages with three…

To expand our understanding of script-general and script-specific principles in the learning of letter names, we examined how three characteristics of alphabet letters -- their frequency in printed materials, order in the alphabet, and visual similarity to other letters -- relate to children's letter-name knowledge in four languages with three…

UPSTART is a federally funded i3 validation project that uses a computer-based program to develop the school readiness skills of preschool children in rural Utah. Researchers used a randomized control trial design to evaluate the impact of the program in advancing children's early literacy skills. Preschoolers in the experimental group were…

Preschoolers' metalinguistic and visual capabilities may be associated with the writing system of their culture. We examined patterns of performance in phonological awareness, naming of letters, morphological awareness, and visual-spatial relations, in 5-year-old native speakers of Spanish (n = 43), Hebrew (n = 40), and Cantonese (n = 63) and the…

An experiment using an analysis of the distinctive features of lower case letters of the English alphabet to predict high- and low-confusible alternates for each letter was reported. Ten disadvantaged 5-year-old Negro children served as their own controls, circling in booklets the letters seen after a 1-second presentation by memory drum. The…

The purpose of this study was to determine if the relationships among alphabet skills, auditory discrimination, and visual discrimination for five-year-olds prior to kindergarten were similar to those found in studies of subskills of first grade children. The sample consisted of 23 middle class nursery school children between the ages of 5.1 and…

Designed to enable parents to help preschool, speech handicapped children enrolled in a program of speech correction by using materials based on the Initial Teaching Alphabet (ITA), these activities correlate with those used in therapy. A short period of time (15 to 20 minutes), a relaxed atmosphere, a regular schedule, and a quiet,…

Twenty-four preschool children (aged 3-3 to 5-6) were studied to test the efficacy of newly developed phonemic-visual-oral materials in the correction of articulatory problems. All subjects were given an articulation test and a battery of five tests to measure auditory memory span and intelligence. Twelve children received 50 sessions of…