Learning about the letter name subset of the vocabulary: Evidence from US and Brazilian preschoolers

To examine the factors that affect the learning of letter names, an important foundation for literacy, we asked 318 US and 369 Brazilian preschoolers to identify each uppercase letter. Similarity of letter shape was the major determinant of confusion errors in both countries, and children were especially likely to interchange letters that were similar in shape as well as name. Errors were also affected by letter frequency, both general frequency and occurrence of letters in children's own names. Differences in letter names and letter frequencies between English and Portuguese led to certain differences in the patterns of performance for children in the two countries. Other differences appeared to reflect US children's greater familiarity with the conventional order of the alphabet. Boys were overrepresented at the low end of the continuum of letter name knowledge, suggesting that some boys begin formal reading instruction lacking important foundational skills.

The case of case: Children's knowledge and use of upper- and lowercase letters

Research on children's spelling has focused on its phonological bases. In the present study, we examined a type of nonphonological knowledge that even young children may possess—knowledge about the distinction between upper- and lowercase letters. In Study 1, we analyzed the capitalization patterns used by children in kindergarten through second grade on words that did not contain a capital letter in their conventional spellings. The younger children, especially, often wrote with capital letters. They did so in a nonrandom way, being more likely to capitalize word-initial letters than later letters. When children inserted an uppercase letter in a noninitial position of a spelling, it tended to be a letter whose uppercase form was especially familiar to the child, the initial letter of the child's first name. In Study 2, which examined kindergartners' knowledge of the names of upper- and lowercase letters, we found further evidence that children's names influence their knowledge about letters and that some of this knowledge is case specific. Together, the results show that early spelling involves more than phonology.