Reading and writing in English and Japanese: A cross‐cultural study of young children*

Abstract

We report a series of experiments which compare the ways in which Japanese and English children read and write single words. The Japanese children read and wrote the words in two types of script, kana and kanji. The first of these consists of symbols which signify syllables, and the second entirely of ideograms. Both groups read and wrote words with and without concurrent vocalization. Concurrent vocalization had no apparent effect on reading or writing kanji: nor did it affect reading English words. But it did consistently impede reading and writing kana words and it did impair writing English. We conclude, tentatively, that English children may read words without the help of prelexical phonological analysis, but that they spell them on the basis of sound‐symbol relationships. We also conclude that there may be no such sharp distinction between reading and writing in either of the two types of Japanese script.