Children and adults were tested on a mental rotation task in which letters were presented in different orientations. The task was performed by itself or with a memory task. Results indicated that the relation of response time to stimulus orientation in the rotation task was the same in both conditions. (BC)

Highlights the instructional benefits of alphabet books for students aged 8 to 11. Discusses their features and uses. Provides an annotated, categorized bibliography of alphabet books appropriate for students beyond the beginning reading level. (SR)

This study investigated the knowledge and strategies that nonliterate adults use to identify print. Participants were 20 low-socioeconomic status Brazilian adults ranging in age from 20 to 74 years. Participants' ability to identify common environmental signs displaying varying degrees of contextual information was investigated along with their…

This article investigates the transition to memory-based performance that commonly occurs with practice on tasks that initially require use of a multistep algorithm. In an alphabet arithmetic task, item response times exhibited pronounced step-function decreases after moderate practice that were uniquely predicted by T. C. Rickard's (1997)…

Letters and words are better identified when there are fewer available choices. How do readers use choice-set restrictions? By analyzing new experimental data and previously reported data, the author shows that Bayes theorem-based models overestimate readers' use of choice-set restrictions. This result is discordant with choice-similarity models…

This guide will help teach phonemic awareness to Pre K-3 students. It presents phonemic awareness as a sophisticated branch of phonological awareness through interactive activities that allows the student to succeed in learning the sounds represented by the letters of the alphabet. The book is designed to provide easy-to-follow suggestions for:…

This wordbook was prepared to help carry out the policy of the Agency for International Development to encourage Americans stationed abroad to learn the official language at their duty post. The book is intended to be a supplemental text for both private individual study and formal classroom instruction. The bulk of the publication is made up of…

This issue of "Focus On" provides an overview of several key early literacy components: phonemic awareness, alphabet knowledge, concepts of print, oral language development, writing, family literacy, and reading aloud. Suggestions for assessing early literacy development are provided, and examples of implementation of effective early literacy…

The article focuses on enriching music and language arts experiences of students. Music can enrich literature and language arts, poetry, theater arts, transitions, science, and math, as well as help meet special learner needs. A well-understood example of enrichment is the alphabet song. A music or classroom teacher using the alphabet song helps…

Phonological awareness (PA), phonological memory (PM), and phonological access to lexical storage (also known as RAN), play important roles in acquiring literacy. We examined the convergent, discriminant, and predictive validity of these phonological processing abilities (PPAs) in 147 3-, 4-, and 5-year-old children whose native language was…

The authors examined the developmental trajectories of children's early letter knowledge in relation to measures spanning and encompassing their prior language-related and cognitive measures and environmental factors and their subsequent Grade 1 reading achievement. Letter knowledge was assessed longitudinally at ages 4.5, 5.0, 5.5, and 6.5…

The dictionary is designed for learners of St. Lawrence Island (Alaska) Yupik, an Eskimo dialect. An introductory section gives an overview of the Yupik alphabet and phonology. Alphabetical word listings in St. Lawrence Island Yupik follow, with definitions in both Yupik and English. A sample sentence in Yupik using the entry word is followed by…

The dictionary of the Central Koyukon Athabaskan dialect contains the most commonly used words in the language, and is designed for use in bilingual education programs in the elementary grades. A pronunciation guide distinguishes between and compares the three Koyukon dialects, and offers details of the orthography and phonology of all three. The…

The project was designed to develop a multisensory, language-oriented curriculum to introduce the letters of the alphabet to six hearing impaired preschoolers. Every week a new letter is introduced via such tasks as art and cooking activities, snacks, beginning sound picture cards, yarn and lacing letters, sandpaper letters, alphabet string beads,…

This contradicts N. F. Johnson's arguments that word perception does not follow letter perception and that letter analysis awaits identification of the word as a unit. His experiments lack controls, and uncontrolled factors may contribute to his effects. Johnson's implications for prior-letter-processing models are contradicted. (CHK)