The selection and ordering of response units (phonemes, letters, keystrokes) represents a transversal issue across different modalities of language production. Here, the issue of serial order was investigated with respect to typewriting. Following seminal investigations in the spoken modality, we conducted an experiment where participants typed as…

Adult neuroimaging studies have demonstrated dissociable neural activation patterns in the visual cortex in response to letters (Latin alphabet) and numbers (Arabic numerals), which suggest a strong experiential influence of reading and mathematics on the human visual system. Here, developmental trajectories in the event-related potential (ERP)…

The purpose of the current study is to investigate the effect of interactive book reading activities on children's print and phonemic awareness skills. In the current study, the semi-experimental pretest-posttest control group design was used. The sampling of the study consists of 34 children attending independent kindergartens in the city of…

Does visuospatial orientation influence repetition and transposed character (TC) priming effects in logographic scripts? According to perceptual learning accounts, the nature of orthographic (form) priming effects should be influenced by text orientation (Dehaene, Cohen, Sigman, & Vinckier, 2005; Grainger & Holcomb, 2009). In contrast,…

Alphabet-boards are commonplace in lower grade classrooms in elementary-schools. If designed correctly, alphabet-boards can help internalize letters into memory. The purpose of this study was to examine alphabet-board characteristics that should be considered by teachers for providing a clear, readable, and applicable pedagogical tool. The…

We predicted that Arabic-speaking children with specific learning disabilities in reading (dyslexia) and spelling (in writing) benefit from a visuomotor-based intervention programme for the development of letter knowledge and the improvement of word and pseudo-word decoding as well as spelling (dictation). It was predicted that the mediation of…

To test a central assumption of the increased perceptual capacity account in individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), the effects of perceptual load and target-stimulus degradation on auditory detection sensitivity were contrasted. Fourteen adolescents with ASD and 16 neurotypical controls performed a visual letter search task under three…

The current study investigated the stability of children's risk status across the preschool year. A total of 1,102 preschool children attending Title 1 schools (n = 631) and non-Title 1 schools (n = 471) participated in this study. Using averaged standard scores for two measures of language, print knowledge, and phonological awareness administered…

The present study investigated the representation and processing of segmental and tonal information in visual Chinese word recognition in native and non-native Chinese readers. Two experiments using homophone judgement paradigm were conducted. When judging two Chinese characters (Experiment 1), both groups showed difficulties when the segmental…

This study investigated the influence of teaching letter names and sounds in isolation or in the context of storybook reading on preschool children's early literacy learning and engagement during instruction. Alphabet instruction incorporated paired associate learning of correspondences between letter names and sounds. In Decontextualized…

This article is dedicated to the "Primer" of Karion Istomin. It focuses on a particular copy created by the Moscow scribe and "children's teacher" Diomid Serkov with handwritten additional material from the "School Decorum" ["Shkol'noye blagochinie"]. This primer is an example of a special book type that…

Learning how to write involves the automation of grapho-motor skills. One of the factors that determine automaticity is "motor anticipation." This is the ability to write a letter while processing information on how to produce following letters. It is essential for writing fast and smoothly. We investigated how motor anticipation…

Developing readers often make anagrammatical errors (e.g. misreading pirates as parties), suggesting they use letter position flexibly during word recognition. However, while it is widely assumed that the occurrence of these errors decreases with increases in reading skill, empirical evidence to support this distinction is lacking. Accordingly, we…

Masked transposed-letter (TL) priming effects have been used to index letter position processing over the course of reading development. Whereas some studies have reported an increase in TL priming over development, others have reported a decrease. These findings have led to the development of 2 somewhat contradictory accounts of letter position…

Metalinguistic awareness (MLA) is a predictor of adult foreign language (FL) learning in instructed settings. Following Bialystok and Ryan (1985) two-component model of MLA, we distinguish ML analysis as the ability to compare and select language items from ML control as the ability to detect and manipulate rule-based linguistic patterns. So far,…