Kindergarten Children's Initial Spoken and Written Word Learning in a Storybook Context

Abstract

Kindergarteners (M age = 6;2) were exposed to novel spoken nonwords and their written forms within a storybook reading context. Following each of 12 stories, the children were required to spell and identify 12 novel written nonwords and then verbally produce and comprehend the spoken version of those words. Results indicated the children acquired initial specific phonological and orthographic representations. Spoken and written word learning skills were strongly associated and both were influenced by the words' linguistic regularities. Spoken word learning ability explained 62% of the variance on a spelling measure, whereas written word learning ability predicted 42% of the variance on a reading measure. The results provide evidence that beginning readers employ simultaneously a mutually shared learning mechanism that is sensitive to statistical regularities of words when engaged in the process of learning new spoken words and their written forms.

Notes

¹A wide range of terms have been used to label word-specific orthographic representations in memory, including word spellings (e.g., Rosenthal & Ehri, 2008), mental graphemic representations (e.g., Wolter & Apel, 2010), sight word or visual spellings (e.g., Ehri & Rosenthal, 2007), and mental orthographic images or orthographic images (e.g., Cunningham, 2006; Ehri, 1980; Masterson, Apel, & Wasowicz, 2006), to name a few. In this article, a specific orthographic representation is defined as the stored, mental image of a specific word. The term is not used to define individuals' knowledge of the orthographic system, such as implicit or explicit knowledge of orthographic conventions or statistical regularities.

*p < .001.