Zhang L, Treiman R. Writing
dinosaur large and
mosquito small: Prephonological spellers' use of semantic information.
SCIENTIFIC STUDIES OF READING : THE OFFICIAL JOURNAL OF THE SOCIETY FOR THE SCIENTIFIC STUDY OF READING 2015;
19:434-445. [PMID:
27064560 PMCID:
PMC4825798 DOI:
10.1080/10888438.2015.1072820]
[Citation(s) in RCA: 9] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 06/01/2023]
Abstract
One influential theory of literacy development, the constructivist perspective, claims that young children believe that writing represents meaning directly and that the appearance of a written word should reflect characteristics of its referent. There has not been strong evidence supporting this idea, however. Circumventing several methodological concerns with previous studies, we examined written spellings of young children who did not yet use letters to represent the sounds of words, that is, prephonological spellers. We identified 38 prephonological spellers (mean age 4 years 2 months) and measured the area of their writing productions. Prephonological spellers made significantly larger productions for words representing large objects than those representing small objects. This effect held true after controlling for the influences of other variables, including size of writing on previous trials and order of trial in a session. Our results suggest that young children sometimes use drawing-like features to communicate the meaning of words when writing.
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