Which Factors Modulate Letter Position Coding in Pre-literate Children?

María Fernández-López,Pablo Gómez,Manuel Perea

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2021.708274

Abstract

One of the central landmarks of learning to read is the emergence of orthographic processing (i.e., the encoding of letter identity and letter order): it constitutes the necessary link between the low-level stages of visual processing and the higher-level processing of words. Regarding the processing of letter position, many experiments have shown worse performance in various tasks for the transposed-letter pair judge-JUDGE than for the orthographic control jupte-JUDGE. Importantly, 4-y.o. pre-literate children also show letter transposition effects in a same-different task: TZ-ZT is more error-prone than TZ-PH. Here, we examined whether this effect with pre-literate children is related to the cognitive and linguistic skills required to learn to read. Specifically, we examined the relation of the transposed-letter in a same-different task with the scores of these children in phonological, alphabetic and metalinguistic awareness, linguistic skills, and basic cognitive processes. To that end, we used a standardized battery to assess the abilities related with early reading acquisition. Results showed that the size of the transposed-letter effect in pre-literate children was strongly associated with the sub-test on basic cognitive processes (i.e., memory and perception) but not with the other sub-tests. Importantly, identifying children who may need a pre-literacy intervention is crucial to minimize eventual reading difficulties. We discuss how this marker can be used as a tool to anticipate reading difficulties in beginning readers.

Highlights

Whereas language is a unique and sophisticated human ability that emerges naturally in children, reading is a learned skill that needs intensive practice
We examined the relationship between the ability of pre-literate children to encode accurately the order of letters—taken from the Perea et al (2016) experiment— with the five sub-tests related to reading readiness and subsequent reading success from the BIL battery: phonological and alphabetic awareness, metalinguistic knowledge, linguistic skills, and basic cognitive processes
We examined the relationship between the capability of pre-literates to differentiate between transposed-letter pairs and identity pairs (e.g., TZ-ZT vs. TZ-TZ) and these children’s scores in basic cognitive processes

Summary

Introduction

Whereas language is a unique and sophisticated human ability that emerges naturally in children, reading is a learned skill that needs intensive practice. Reading acquisition is a complex process that involves functional brain changes and requires the correct execution of numerous mental functions (see Maurer et al, 2005). For this reason, children must have adequate perceptual and cognitive skills before the initial steps of reading instruction. Readers can quickly map the visual input into abstract letter representations and, subsequently, into word representations (see Dehaene et al, 2005; Grainger et al, 2008) The emergence of these abstract letter representations would occur during the first 2 years of Letter Position Coding in Pre-readers reading acquisition (Jackson and Coltheart, 2001). Consistent with this view, using Forster and Davis (1984) masked priming technique, Gomez and Perea (2020) found that, for Grade 2 readers, the identification time of a word like EDGE is virtually the same when rapidly preceded by the physically identical prime EDGE and when preceded by the nominally (but not physically) identical prime edge

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