Although English lacks 1-to-1 relationships between sounds and spellings, considering the context in which a phoneme occurs can often aid in selecting a spelling. For example, /a/ is typically spelled as a when it follows /w/, as in wand, but as o when it follows other consonants, as in pond. In 2 experiments, the authors asked whether children's…

To examine how young children learn to read new words, we asked preschoolers (N = 115, mean age 4 years, 8 months) to learn and remember novel spellings that made sense based on letter names (e.g. TZ for "tease") and spellings that were visually distinctive but phonetically inappropriate. Children who were more knowledgeable about letter names…