The Effect of Three Methods of Presentation and Socioeconomic Class on Recognition Performance in the Presentation of Low Frequency Words to Kindergarteners

Abstract

A word recognition task was presented to 72 lower social class and 72 upper-middle social class kindergarteners who were randomly assigned to one of 3 methods (Word, Word Picture, or Word Object) and were asked to learn to recognize eight low frequency words. There were significant differences between lower and upper socioeconomic levels and among the three methods ( p < .01). The Word Method was superior to the Word Picture and Word Object Methods ( p < .05) for children from both lower and middle class schools and students from upper socioeconomic level schools scored higher than those from the lower socioeconomic schools ( p < .01).