ABSTRACT

To expand our understanding of script-general and script-specific principles in the learning of letter names, we examined how three characteristics of alphabet letters – their frequency in printed materials, order in the alphabet, and visual similarity to other letters – relate to children’s letter-name knowledge in four languages with three distinct scripts (English [N = 318; M age = 4.90], Portuguese [N = 366; M age = 5.80], Korean [N = 168; M age = 5.48], and Hebrew [N = 645; M age = 5.42]). Explanatory item response modeling analysis showed that the frequency of letters in printed materials was consistently related to letter difficulty across the four languages. There were also moderation effects for letter difficulty in English and Korean, and for discriminatory power of letters in Korean. The results suggest that exposure to letters as measured by letter frequency is a language-general mechanism in the learning of alphabet letters.

摘要

为了扩展我们对学习字母名称的一般和特定脚本原则的理解，我们研究了字母的三个特征——它们在印刷材料中的频率、字母顺序以及与其他字母的视觉相似性——与儿童的四种语言的字母名称知识，具有三种不同的文字（英语 [ N = 318; M age = 4.90]、葡萄牙语 [ N = 366; M age = 5.80]、韩语 [ N = 168; M age = 5.48] 和希伯来语[ N = 645;米年龄 = 5.42]）。解释性项目响应建模分析表明，印刷材料中字母的频率与四种语言的字母难度始终相关。对英语和韩语的字母难度以及韩语字母的辨别力也有调节作用。结果表明，以字母频率衡量的字母暴露是学习字母的语言一般机制。