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…

Visual-attentional theories of dyslexia predict deficits for dyslexic children not only for the perception of letter strings but also for non-alphanumeric symbol strings. This prediction was tested in a two-alternative forced-choice paradigm with letters, digits, and symbols. Children with dyslexia showed significant deficits for letter and digit…

The stimulus properties of the letters b, d, p, and q were investigated in an attempt to demonstrate that the common reversal of these letters by beginning readers is in part determined by the vertical aspect of the stimulus figure. One hundred eighty kindergarteners were randomly selected from a racially mixed population and randomly assigned to…

This study investigated alternate methods of letter discrimination pretraining and word recognition training in young children. Seventy kindergarten children were trained to recognize eight printed words in a vocabulary list by a mixed-list paired-associate method. Four of the stimulus words had visual response choices (pictures) and four had…

The assumption that the learning of letter names in their proper sequence is a prerequisite for literacy can be questioned. There is disagreement over the value of early letter-name training. It is variously said to aid in letter or word discrimination, to aid in attaching sounds to letters, and to interfere with both of these tasks. An analysis…

A study was conducted to address the need for the public school system to provide an enriched curriculum for classroom teachers with "at-risk" students. It also examined whether students who had been exposed to a variety of supporting and related techniques of letter recognition through systematic instruction would be able to…

This paper examines the letter recognition difficulties of 322 primary grade students with decoding problems. Each student was asked to name all of the lower case letters, which were presented in non-alphabetical order. Each response was accurately recorded to determine which letters were taken for others. All responses were then tallied, and an…

Four paradoxes appear in research on learning to read: (1) the ability to name letters is a good predictor of reading readiness, yet letter-naming training does not help children learn how to read; (2) visual discrimination is often better in poor readers than in good readers; (3) learning to read two languages is easier than learning to read one;…

This guide familiarizes teachers with children's books and ways that they can be used to highlight and reinforce reading skills. Each of the 10 sections provides annotated lists of books, suggesting practical follow-up activities for skill development, extension, or enrichment. The beginning of each section includes remarks concerning the nature…