Newly literate children have a tendency to spell s-stop sequences in words like "spin," "stop," "sky" with B, D, G (SBIN, SDOP, SGY), rather than with standard P, T, K. This observation potentially has implications for theories of English phonology as well as of language and literacy acquisition. Understanding these…

A study of acquisition of the alphabetic principle in 64 preliterate children, aged 3 to 5 years, is reported. It appears that phonemic awareness and grapheme-phoneme knowledge are needed in combination for acquisition of the alphabetic principle. Once gained, alphabetic insight proved relatively robust. (TJH)

Preschool children at familial risk for reading disability were assessed on cognitive and linguistic variables and compared with preschoolers without familial risk. Risk children displayed performance profiles resembling those of older children with reading disability. Each group received intensive instruction in phonemic awareness and structured…

We conducted behavior?genetic analyses of kindergarten reading, spelling, phonological awareness, rapid naming, and spoken sentence processing in 172 pairs of monozygotic and 153 pairs of same-sex dizygotic twin kindergarten children sampled in the United States and Australia. We also modeled progress from preschool to kindergarten in…

Reports on the development of a test of phonemic awareness suitable for administration to young children. Compares kindergarteners' performance on a measure controlling for global similarity and another measure not controlled. Finds support for the importance of controlling for global similarity when attempting to measure phoneme invariance. (RS)

Results of 6 experiments with 109 Australian preschool children favor training in phoneme identity over segmentation as a component of initial reading instruction because it is easier to implement and its relation to alphabetic insight is stronger. Implications for the initial reading curriculum are discussed. (SLD)

Discusses a study of the relationship of Australian elementary school students' word reading strategies to comprehension level, reading time, and phonemic awareness. Reports that performance in reading both irregular and nonsense words is a reasonably good predictor of subsequent performance. Recommends remedial training for students lacking…

Individual differences in measures of prereading skills and in questionnaire measures of 4-5-year-old twins' print environments in Australia, Scandinavia, and the United States were explored with a behavioral-genetic design. Modest phenotypic correlations were found between environmental measures and the twins' print knowledge, general verbal…