Abstract
Developing readers often make anagrammatical errors (e.g. misreading pirates as parties), suggesting they use letter position flexibly during word recognition. However, while it is widely assumed that the occurrence of these errors decreases with increases in reading skill, empirical evidence to support this distinction is lacking. Accordingly, we compared the performance of developing child readers (aged 8-10 years) against the end-state performance of skilled adult readers in a timed naming task, employing anagrams used previously in this area of research. Moreover, to explore the use of letter position by developing readers and skilled adult readers more fully, we used anagrams which, to form another word, required letter transpositions over only interior letter positions, or both interior and exterior letter positions. The patterns of effects across these two anagram types for the two groups of readers were very similar. In particular, both groups showed similarly slowed response times (and developing readers increased errors) for anagrams requiring only interior letter transpositions but not for anagrams that required exterior letter transpositions. This similarity in the naming performance of developing readers and skilled adult readers suggests that the end-state skilled use of letter position is established earlier during reading development than is widely assumed.
Highlights
Developing readers often make anagrammatical errors suggesting they use letter position flexibly during word recognition
If imprecision in the use of letter position is a general feature of the developing word recognition system, effects of flexibility in the use of letter position observed so far for pseudowords should be observed for real words and this would serve as a key indication of its natural role in word recognition
Evidence of difficulty in reading anagrams has been found in studies of children with letter position dyslexia who often make anagrammatical errors
Summary
Developing readers often make anagrammatical errors (e.g., misreading pirates as parties) suggesting they use letter position flexibly during word recognition. A wealth of evidence indicates that skilled adult readers experience surprisingly little difficulty when the order of letters in words is jumbled, so long as the exterior letters (the beginning and end letters of words) remain in their original locations (e.g., Andrews, 1996; Andrews & Lo, 2012; Chambers, 1979; Forster, Davis, Schoknecht, & Carter, 1987; Johnson & Eisler, 2012; Johnson, Rayner, & Perea, 2007; Perea & Lupker, 2003; Rayner, White, Johnson, & Liversedge, 2006; White, Johnson, Liversedge, & Rayner, 2008; see Jordan, 1990, 1995; Jordan, Patching & Thomas, 2003; Jordan, Thomas, & Patching, 2003; Jordan, Thomas, Patching, & Scott-Brown, 2003; Jordan, Thomas, & ScottBrown, 1999) These findings are widely interpreted as showing that letter position is used flexibly even for skilled adult word recognition (e.g., Davis, 2010; Gómez, Ratcliff & Perea, 2008; Norris & Kinoshita, 2012). The central aim of the present research is to cast more light on the developmental trajectory of the influence of letter position on word recognition by comparing the performance of typically developing readers with that of skilled adult readers when processing anagrams
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