Pollo, Tatiana Cury, Brett Kessler & Rebecca Treiman. 2009. Statistical patterns in children’s early writing. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 104. 410–426. doi:10.1016/j.jecp.2009.07.003
Many theories of spelling development claim that, before children begin to spell phonologically, their spellings are random strings of letters. We evaluated this idea by testing young children (mean 4 years, 9 months) in Brazil and the US and selecting a group of prephonological spellers. The spellings of this prephonological group showed a number of patterns that reflected such things as the frequencies of letters and bigrams in the child’s language. The prephonological spellers in the two countries produced spellings that differed in some respects, consistent with their exposure to different written languages. We found no evidence for reportedly universal patterns in early spelling, such as the idea that children write one letter for each syllable. Overall, our results reveal that early spellings that are not phonological are by no means random or universal and preserve certain patterns in the writing to which the child has been exposed.
Unofficial submitted manuscript, Word doc format.
Pollo, T. C., Kessler, B., & Treiman, R. (2009). Statistical patterns in children’s early writing. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 104, 410–426. doi:10.1016/j.jecp.2009.07.003
Last change 2009-10-01T21:05:41-0500