Movement into Reading: Is the First Stage of Printed Word Learning Visual or Phonetic?

TLDR

Phonetic processing, the recognition of letter‑sound associations, is posited as the primary mechanism by which children first learn to read single words, rather than relying on visual sight‑word recognition or phoneme blending. The study grouped kindergarteners into prereaders, novices, and veterans and taught them simplified phonetic spellings (letters corresponding to sounds) and visually distinctive spellings (no sound correspondence) to assess learning differences. Prereaders learned visual spellings more easily, whereas novices and veterans learned phonetic spellings more easily, indicating a shift from visual to phonetic cue processing as children progress in reading.

Abstract

KINDERGARTENERS WERE GROUPED according to their ability to read words: prereaders (no words read), novices (a few words read), and veterans (several words read). They were taught to read two kinds of word spellings: simplified phonetic spellings whose letters corresponded to sounds (e.g., JRF for giraffe), and visual spellings whose letters bore no sound correspondence but were more distinctive visually. Prereaders learned to read the visual spellings more easily than the phonetic spellings, while novices and veterans learned to read the phonetic spellings more easily. These results suggest that when children move into reading, they shift from visual cue processing of words to phonetic cue processing. Phonetic processing entails recognizing and remembering associations between letters in spellings and sounds in pronunciations. This learning mechanism, rather than visually based sight-word learning or sounding out and blending, is claimed to explain how children first become able to read single words reliably.