The extent to which intralist similarity affects kindergarten pupils' rate of acquisition, word recognition skills, and tendency to generalize responses to similar words was investigated. The subjects were 54 children from a semirural elementary school who had had no formal training in letter recognition. Three acquisition lists were used to represent increasing intralist similarity. Word recognition and generalization tasks were constructed. The children, randomly assigned to learn each list, were given prefamiliarization training and then were given acquisition and test trials. Analysis of variance results revealed no significant differences between groups in the serial-order trial condition, but showed that introduction of intralist similarity impeded rate of acquisition. The medium-similarity group responded more like the no-similarity group than like the high-similarity group. It was concluded that, contrary to the findings of previous studies, the present results implied that medium similarity is sufficiently effective for use with beginning readers since it allows rapid initial learning while causing greater accuracy in subsequent word recognition than no similarity. Tables of results and references are included. (MS)