Abstract
Before children are formally taught how to use letters to symbolize speech sounds, they know quite a bit about both. In three studies, I explored competing predictors of the quality of preschoolers’ spellings of the first phoneme of words—the first phoneme of a word being the most likely phoneme that a 3-, 4-, or 5-year-old attempts to spell. Frequency-based predictors included how common a word is or how often caregivers talk about certain letters. Phonetic-based predictors included segmenting the phonemes within a consonant cluster, how long a word is, the extent to which a letter name gives clues to the phonemes it can spell, and how similar a sound is to other phonemes. Idiosyncratic predictors included age and relationships between phonemes children were trying to spell and their own names, such as how many phonemes they have in their name, where the phoneme is in their name, and whether the letters they use come from their name. Children’s ability to produce plausible spellings—those that were represented with a soundalike letter, such as ‹k› for the first sound in “cat”—was positively predicted by the by the absence of a consonant cluster, the phoneme’s being spellable by a letter with a more easily interpretable name, and the phoneme’s being the first phoneme in their own name. A close examination of children’s erroneous spellings provided insight into their familiarity with specific letters. When children did not produce a plausible spelling, they used more letters from their own names and letters that are talked about frequently in child-directed speech. Children’s errors also reflect some understanding of classes of speech sounds. The results from these studies support the idea that before learning about the formal properties of their writing system, children use information gleaned from frequent or personal exposure and phonetics to guide their attempts at spelling.
Committee Chair
Rebecca Treiman
Degree
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Author's Department
Psychology
Document Type
Dissertation
Date of Award
12-19-2023
Language
English (en)
DOI
https://doi.org/10.7936/q50e-wp71
Author's ORCID
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7328-7917
Recommended Citation
Homer, Jayde Elizabeth, "A Quantitative Analysis of Preschoolers’ English Consonant Spellings: Teasing Apart the Influences of Frequencies, Phonetics, and Children’s Own Names" (2023). Arts & Sciences Theses and Dissertations. 3192.
The definitive version is available at https://doi.org/10.7936/q50e-wp71