The way in which letters are assigned their position when recognizing a visually presented word was examined in three experiments using nonwords created by transposing the two medial consonants of a bisyllabic baseword (e.g., "nakpin," "semron"). The difficulty in responding to such "TL" nonwords in a lexical decision task was shown to be lower…

The question of script was paramount in the nineteenth-century debate over Hindi and Urdu, two closely related languages that are characterised by "extreme digraphia". Rather than rehearsing the well-known story of the culturally and politically charged process of differentiation in which the two sister languages became prime markers of…

Four experiments were conducted to examine the role of orthotactic probability, i.e. the sequential letter probability, in the early stages of vocabulary acquisition by adult native speakers and advanced learners of German. The results show different effects for orthographic probability in incidental and intentional vocabulary acquisition: Whereas…

Testing or evaluation in an educational context is primarily used to measure or evaluate and authenticate the academic readiness, learning advancement, acquisition of skills, or instructional needs of learners. This study tried to determine whether the varied combinations of arrangements of options and letter cases in a Multiple-Choice Test (MCT)…

The central purpose of this study was to analyze the dynamics of handwriting movements in real time for Spanish students in early grades with and without learning disabilities. The sample consisted of 120 children from Grades 1 through 3 (primary education), classified into two groups: with learning disabilities and without learning disabilities.…

The present longitudinal study investigated the role of spelling as a bridge between various reading-related predictors and English word reading in Chinese children learning English as a Second Language (ESL). One hundred and forty-one 5-year-old kindergarten children from Hong Kong, whose first language (L1) was Cantonese and second language (L2)…

Letter name knowledge in the preschool ages is a strong predictor of later reading ability, but little is known about the psychometric characteristics of uppercase and lowercase letters considered together. Data from 1,113 preschoolers from diverse backgrounds on both uppercase and lowercase letter name knowledge were analyzed using Item Response…

Letter name knowledge in the preschool ages is a strong predictor of later reading ability, but little is known about the psychometric characteristics of uppercase and lowercase letters considered together. Data from 1,113 preschoolers from diverse backgrounds on both uppercase and lowercase letter name knowledge were analyzed using Item Response…

At what point in reading development does literacy impact object recognition and orientation processing? Is it specific to mirror images? To answer these questions, forty-six 5- to 7-year-old preschoolers and first graders performed two same-different tasks differing in the matching criterion-orientation-based versus shape-based (orientation…

Early childhood teachers are increasingly encouraged to support children's development of letter-sound abilities. Assessment of letter-sound knowledge is key in planning for effective instruction, yet the letter-sound knowledge assessments currently available and suitable for preschool-age children demonstrate significant limitations. The purpose…

In this article, I deal with the transition from traditional "school" forms of instruction to educational processes that are fully mediated by digital technologies. Against the background of the idea the very institution "school" is closely linked to the invention of the alphabetic writing system and to the need of initiating…

In a series of experiments, we tested a recently proposed hypothesis stating that the degree of alignment between the form of a mental representation resulting from learning with a particular visualization format and the specific requirements of a learning task determines learning performance (task-appropriateness). Groups of participants were…

This study explores the time-course of word processing by grammatical class (verbs vs. nouns) and meaning (action vs. non-action) by means of an ERP experiment. The morphology of Spanish words allows for a noun (e.g., "bail"-e [a dance]) or a verb (e.g., "bail"-ar [to dance]) to be formed by simply changing the suffix attached…

Word and pseudoword reading are related abilities fundamental to reading development in alphabetic orthographies. They are respectively assumed to index children's orthographic representations of words, which are in turn acquired through the underlying "self-teaching mechanism" of alphabetic pseudoword decoding. Little is known about…

Purpose: As part of this clinical forum on curriculum-based intervention, the goal of this tutorial is to share research about the importance of language and literacy foundations in natural environments during emergent literacy skill development, from infancy through preschool. Following an overview of intervention models in schools by Powell…