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Preschoolers use partial letter names to select spellings: Evidence from Portuguese

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2008

TATIANA CURY POLLO ,
REBECCA TREIMAN  and
BRETT KESSLER
TATIANA CURY POLLO*
Affiliation:
Washington University in St. Louis
REBECCA TREIMAN
Affiliation:
Washington University in St. Louis
BRETT KESSLER
Affiliation:
Washington University in St. Louis
*
ADDRESS FOR CORRESPONDENCE Tatiana Cury Pollo, Washington University, Campus Box 1125, One Brookings Drive, St. Louis, MO 63130. E-mail: tpollo@wustl.edu
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Abstract

Two studies examined children's use of letter–name spelling strategies when target phoneme sequences match letter names with different degrees of precision. We examined Portuguese-speaking preschoolers' use of h (which is named /a′ga/ but which never represents those sounds) when spelling words beginning with /ga/ or variants of /ga/. We also looked at use of q (named /ke/) when spelling /ke/ and /ge/. Children sometimes used h for stimuli beginning with /ga/ and /ka/, and q when spelling words and nonwords beginning with /ke/ and /ge/ they did not use these letters when stimuli began with other sequences. Thus, their spellings evinced use of letter-name matches primarily when consonant-vowel sequences matched, such that vowels must be exact but consonants could differ in voicing from the target phoneme.

Type
Articles
Information
Applied Psycholinguistics , Volume 29 , Issue 2 , April 2008 , pp. 195 - 212
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2008

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