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Young children’s knowledge 1 Running head: CHILDREN’S KNOWLEDGE ABOUT PRINTED NAMES Young Children’s Knowledge About Printed Names
| Content Provider | Semantic Scholar |
|---|---|
| Author | Cohen, Jeremy Mulqueeny, Kevin Kessler, Brett Schechtman, Suzanne |
| Copyright Year | 2007 |
| Abstract | Four experiments examined young children’s knowledge about the visual characteristics of writing, specifically personal names. Children younger than 4 years of age, even those who could read no simple words, showed some knowledge about the horizontal orientation of English names, the Latin letters that make them up, and their left-to-right directionality. Preschoolers also had some familiarity with the shapes of the letters in their own first name, especially the leftmost letter. Knowledge of the conventional capitalization pattern for English names emerged later, after a period during which children preferred names in all uppercase letters. When tested with personal names, the kind of word they know best, young children are surprisingly knowledgeable about the visual characteristics of writing. Young children’s knowledge 3 Young Children’s Knowledge About Printed Names Beginning reading ability is typically tested by asking children to read short words that are frequently seen in books, such as in and look. Children who cannot read such words, and who cannot sound out simple nonwords, are said to be nonreaders. However, such children may not be totally ignorant about reading and writing. In the research reported here, we explore the idea that even young children may be rather knowledgeable about one type of word that is well represented in their early literacy experiences and that is particularly important to them—personal names. Before discussing what children may know about personal names, we review previous research on children’s knowledge about print in general. Some findings suggest that children who have not yet been exposed to formal literacy instruction typically pay little attention to print. This appears to be the case for many of the signs and product labels that children see daily, where the letters themselves are not usually critical for identification. Masonheimer, Drum, and Ehri (1984) showed U.S. preschoolers (mean age 4;8 [years;months]) photographs of common signs and labels in their typical contexts (e.g., a Pepsi label on a bottle) and the same printed words out of context (e.g., Pepsi printed in manuscript type). Children who were classified as prereaders by typical reading tests often identified the labels correctly when they appeared in their normal settings. The children’s responses did not change when a letter was altered, as when the initial P on the label of a Pepsi bottle was changed to X. When the children saw the words out of their normal contexts, they usually failed to identify them. Just as preschoolers pay little attention to the print on many commercial products, so they pay little attention to the print in storybooks. When young children are being read to, they spend far more time looking at the pictures than the print, limiting their ability to learn about the characteristics of the print (Evans & Saint-Aubin, 2005; Justice, Skibbe, Canning, & Lankford, 2005). Another sign of children’s reliance on pictures is their tendency to identify the referents of Young children’s knowledge 4 printed words on the basis of nearby pictures. In the moving word task, a printed word such as girl is placed under a picture of a girl and identified as meaning ‘girl’, but then is moved under a picture of a tree. Young children may claim, in this situation, that the word is now ‘tree’ (e.g., Bialystok, 1991, 2000). Yet another piece of evidence that preschoolers are more sensitive to the context in which writing appears than to the letters it contains comes from a study with 4 and 5 year olds discussed by Gough, Juel, and Griffith (1992). Children were taught to pronounce four words that were printed on cards. One of the cards had a thumbprint in the corner. The thumbprinted word was mastered most quickly. But when the children saw the word again without the thumbprint, less than half of them could identify it. The children apparently paid more attention to the smudge near the writing than the writing itself. Findings like those just described suggest that preschoolers pay little attention to print itself, at least when pictures or salient contextual cues are available. Another line of research, however, suggests that youngsters know about at least some characteristics of writing well before they are exposed to formal literacy instruction. According to Tolchinsky’s (2003) differentiation hypothesis, children learn about the features of print that are common to all writing systems before they learn about the features that are specific to their particular system. All current writing systems share certain graphic features, including the fact that the symbols are arranged in straight lines— what we call in this paper linearity—and the fact that the marks rarely look like what they represent—lack of iconicity. These features reflect the basic nature of writing—that it differs from drawing in representing language rather than representing meaning directly and that it employs sequences of symbols to represent sequences of linguistic units. Other graphic features of writing do not stem directly from its basic nature and so may vary across writing systems. For example, the symbols may be arranged horizontally or vertically and, if horizontal, may run from left to right or right to left. The shapes of the symbols may also vary from one writing system to another. Young children’s knowledge 5 If children have some understanding of the basic nature of writing, such as the fact that the symbols represent sequences of linguistic units, then the visual characteristics of writing that reflect these facts may be relatively easy for them to master. Indeed, Tolchinsky argues that children’s early scribbles adhere to the universal graphic features of writing but not necessarily to the specific features of the writing in their environments. Language-specific characteristics are mastered later, at which point children’s own written productions begin to take on the characteristics of the system to which they are exposed. Evidence for the differentiation hypothesis comes not only from studies of children’s written productions but also from studies in which children decide whether various displays are “writing,” “words,” or “something for reading.” Children in such writing recognition studies rule out nonlinear strings of symbols from an early age, suggesting an understanding of the linear nature of writing (Ganapole, 1987; Lavine, 1977). In the experiments reported here, we explored young children’s knowledge about the characteristics of one important type of word that has not featured in most previous writing recognition studies—personal names. We examined names, especially children’s own first names, because they appear to be learned early and to play an important role in literacy development (e.g., Bloodgood, 1999; Ferreiro & Teberosky, 1982; Levin & Aram, 2004; Levin, Both-de Vries, Aram, & Bus, 2005; Treiman, Kessler, & Pollo, 2006). We hypothesized that even young preschoolers who are classified as nonreaders by standard criteria would show relatively good knowledge about the visual characteristics of print when tested with personal names. We asked whether this knowledge included certain language-specific characteristics as well as characteristics common to all writing systems. To verify that personal names figure heavily among early learned words, we surveyed the parents of 27 U.S. children aged 2;6 to 5;4. The sample for the survey, like those of the experiments that follow, was middle and upper middle class. We asked each parent whether his or Young children’s knowledge 6 her child was familiar with any printed words and, if so, to list the first words the child had learned about, up to a maximum of five. Three of the 27 children were reported to be familiar with no printed words, and one parent was unable to specify the first word learned. Of the remaining children, 87% were reported to have learned a personal name first. This name was usually (85% of cases) the child’s own first name. Of all the early learned words that the parents listed, 70% were personal names. In addition to the child’s name, these included names of family members (including pets) and favorite characters (e.g., Barbie). Only 15% of children’s early words were listed as preprimer and primer words by Harris and Jacobson (1972). Thus, the words that children learn first are not usually the words that appear on typical reading tests. Nor were there many words that typically appear in distinctive colors and fonts. Just 8% of the early words, such as McDonald’s, fell into this category. Thus, personal names figure prominently among children’s early learned words. Well before formal reading instruction begins, children have the opportunity to learn about the visual characteristics of personal names in general and their own names in particular. Several previous studies have examined preschoolers’ knowledge about personal names, almost always by asking them to write their own name, Mom, or Dad (e.g., Bader & Hildebrand, 1991; Levin et al., 2005; Welsch, Sullivan, & Justice, 2003). However, it can be difficult to draw conclusions about children’s knowledge of names on the basis of production tasks alone. Successful performance on these tasks requires detailed memory representations and good motor skills. Performance also depends on children’s willingness to produce a less than perfect product. Children who write a familiar name using an automatized sequence of motor movements may know that this form is one of several possibilities, but such knowledge would not be visible from the production alone. In the experiments reported here, we asked children not to write names but to judge whether various displays were correctly written names. We did not ask children to read the Young children’s knowledge 7 names aloud, as our interest was not in children’s ability to relate spellings to sounds but in their knowledge about the visual forms. Experiment 1 w |
| File Format | PDF HTM / HTML |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | http://spell.psychology.wustl.edu/TreimanPrintedNames/TreimanPrintedNames.pdf |
| Language | English |
| Access Restriction | Open |
| Content Type | Text |
| Resource Type | Article |
