One influential theory of literacy development, the constructivist perspective, claims that young children believe that writing represents meaning directly and that the appearance of a written word should reflect characteristics of its referent. There has not been strong evidence supporting this idea, however. Circumventing several methodological…

According to many views of literacy development, prereaders use a logographic approach when they attempt to link print and speech. If so, these children should find pairs in which the spelling-pronunciation links are consistent with their writing system no easier to learn than arbitrary pairs. We tested this idea by comparing the ability of U.S.…

Noting that in previous research, the linguistic status of the unit has often been confounded by its size, five experiments were conducted to provide a better test of the linguistic status hypothesis. Results supported the linguistic status hypothesis by indicating that effects of linguistic level on phonological sensitivity cannot always be…

Examines young children's ability to use simple morphological relations among words as a source of information about the words' spelling. Found that children used morphological relations among words only to a small extent. Suggests that although phonology plays an important role in early spelling, young children can also use other sources of…