In any visual search task in the lab or in the world, observers will make errors. Those errors can be categorized as "deterministic": If you miss this target in this display once, you will definitely miss it again. Alternatively, errors can be "stochastic", occurring randomly with some probability from trial to trial.…

This study explores how preschoolers develop understandings of the symbolic nature of print in the context of their own writing. Using qualitative methods and a cross-sectional design, this study documents the learning trajectory that begins with children's earliest experiences linking speech and print in writing events and continues as they learn…

Educationally-oriented measures of handwriting fluency--tasks such as written alphabet recall and sentence copying--conflate graphomotor skill and various higher-level abilities. Direct measurement of pen control when forming letters requires analysis of pen-tip velocity associated with the production of sub-letter features that, in a skilled…

Children's conceptual knowledge of writing words and numbers is an important aspect of their cognitive development. Children use notations as representations that have a communicative value and begin to learn about formal differences between writing words and writing numbers at an early age before the onset of formal schooling. The aim of the…

Research Findings: Letter name knowledge (LNK) is essential for a good start in learning to read. However, the literature shows conflicting results. Using an associative learning theory framework, the present study examined the influence of child and letter characteristics on LNK in French-speaking children. Children aged 3 to 5-6 years were asked…

With the overwhelming "Anglocentric" or "alphabetocentric" science of reading, the current review aimed to add to the science of reading acquisition from the perspective of abugidic writing system, distinct from the well-research alphabetic writing system in multiple dimensions of orthographic complexity, as proposed by Daniels…

Research suggests that providing children with activities that involve using their bodies to form the shapes of letters can help them acquire pre-reading skills. Little is known, however, as to the extent to which such embodied learning interventions are superior to more traditional pencil-and-paper activities, which of specific arm or body…

Due to the prevalence of words that cannot be read phonetically in the English language, sight word instruction is required to supplement phonics instruction. In this study, we manipulated stimulus disparity in sight word sets by comparing the effects of sets of sight words with the same initial letter (3 words per set, 3 total sets) versus…

This article describes "Verse Chronograms" in the Cabrera Portrait (1750) of Sor Juana. The author explains the meaning of three hard-to-see sets of verses inscribed on the canvas, that are a kind of text known as a chronogram, a literary puzzle in which the numerical values of letters that correspond to Roman numerals are added up so…

Many users of social media from different countries and speaking different languages that use non-Latin orthography such as Arabic choose to transliterate their first name and surname in Romanized script, vis English. Due to the differences between the user's native language and English in vowels and consonants and how they are pronounced, some…

Children's ability to correctly name letters is a key predictor of later reading abilities and skills, but research on letter naming from Scandinavian orthographies is scarce. The aim of this study is to explore how child- and letter-related factors (i.e., gender, child name, phonemic awareness, letter position in the alphabet and frequency, and…

The role of phonological awareness and alphabet knowledge in learning to read is well established in mono-lingual English speakers. However, it is under explored in the context of English Language Learners (ELL), especially in regions like India where the native language differs phonologically and orthographically from the target literate…

In a quasi-experimental study, kindergarten teachers taught children mnemonic stories to orient the confusable letters "b" and "d." In the first week's stories, intervention teachers introduced the left-to-right sequence of features for these letters with "the bat hits the ball" and "a dime rolls up to a…

This article addresses the characteristics of learners in the emergent stage of literacy development and describes two instructional practices that facilitate the development of the alphabetic principle and concept of word in text.

One of the difficulties in teaching Turkish, which is a phonetically rich language, to foreigners, is that similar sounds are often confused with each other. Since even a single punctuation mark is crucial for writing and reading Turkish letters (i-i, o-ö, u-ü, c-ç, g-g, s-s, etc.), students who use the Arabic alphabet have great difficulty…