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The present study traced the emergence of the neural circuits for reading in five-year-old children of diverse pre-literacy ability. In the fall and winter of kindergarten, children performed a one-back task with letter versus false font stimuli during fMRI scanning. At the start of kindergarten, children with on-track pre-literacy skills (OT) recruited bilateral temporo-parietal regions for the letter > false font comparison. In contrast, children at-risk for reading difficulty (AR) showed no differential activation in this region. Following 3months of kindergarten and, for AR children, supplemental reading instruction, OT children showed left-lateralized activation in the temporo-parietal region, whereas AR children showed bilateral activation and recruitment of frontal regions including the anterior cingulate cortex. These data suggest that typical reading development is associated with initial recruitment and subsequent disengagement of right hemisphere homologous regions while atypical reading development may be associated with compensatory recruitment of frontal regions. ► The temporo-parietal region is recruited during letter processing in 5-year olds. ► The recruitment is bilateral at an early stage of pre-literacy development. ► The recruitment becomes left lateralized with gain in pre-literacy skills. ► The pattern of recruitment depends on the levels of pre-literacy skills. ► Right hemisphere engagement and disengagement may be typical of reading development.

The present study examined invented spelling of pinyin (a phonological coding system for teaching and learning Chinese words) in relation to subsequent Chinese reading development. Among 296 Chinese kindergartners in Beijing, independent invented pinyin spelling was found to be uniquely predictive of Chinese word reading 12 months later, even with Time 1 syllable deletion, phoneme deletion, and letter knowledge, in addition to the autoregressive effects of Time 1 Chinese word reading, statistically controlled. These results underscore the importance of children's early pinyin representations for Chinese reading acquisition, both theoretically and practically. The findings further support the idea of a universal phonological principle and indicate that pinyin is potentially an ideal measure of phonological awareness in Chinese.

This study examined the relative contribution of letter-name knowledge and phonological awareness to literacy skills and the relationship between letter-name knowledge and phonological awareness, using data from Korean-speaking preschoolers. The results revealed that although both letter-name knowledge and phonological awareness made unique contributions to literacy skills (i.e., word reading, pseudoword reading, and spelling), letter-name knowledge played a more important role than phonological awareness in literacy acquisition in Korean. Letter-name knowledge explained appreciably greater amount of variance and had larger effect sizes in literacy skills. Furthermore, children with greater syllable, body (e.g., segmenting cat into ca-t ), and phoneme awareness had higher levels of letter-name knowledge. In particular, children’s syllable awareness and body awareness were positively associated with their letter-name knowledge, even after controlling for children’s phoneme awareness. These results suggest that Korean children’s awareness of larger phonological units (i.e., syllable and body) in addition to phoneme awareness may mediate the relationship between letter-name knowledge and literacy acquisition in Korean, in contrast with previous findings in English that have demonstrated a positive relationship only between phoneme awareness and letter-name knowledge, and the hypothesis that phoneme awareness mediates the relationship between letter-name knowledge and literacy acquisition.

Nineteen adults who did not know how to read were asked to spell a list of words as well as possible. In general, their spellings consisted of letters whose names could be clearly heard in the pronunciation of the word (e.g., the spelling I and U for chinelo, in which the names of the letters i and u can be detected in the pronunciation of the word). These results suggest that illiterate adults use their knowledge of letter names to connect print to speech. Similar to what has been observed among preschool children, the use of this strategy resulted, sometimes, in so-called \"syllabic\" spellings, that is, spellings in which the number of letters correspond to the number of syllables in the pronunciation of the word. Keywords: Illiterate adults; Spelling; Letter-name knowledge. Dezenove adultos que nao haviam comecado a ler foram solicitados a escrever uma lista de palavras da melhor maneira que pudessem. De modo geral, suas escritas foram compostas de letras cujo nome podia ser claramente detectado na pronuncia das palavras (e.g., a escrita IU para chinelo). Esses resultados sugerem que adultos iletrados utilizam seu conhecimento do nome das letras para conectar a escrita a fala. Como parece ocorrer entre criancas, o uso dessa estrategia resultou, algumas vezes, em escritas \"silabicas\", isto e, escritas em que o numero de letras corresponde ao numero de silabas na pronuncia da palavra. Palavras-chave: Adultos iletrados; Escrita; Conhecimento do nome das letras.

The purpose of this study was to examine longitudinally the development of letter-sound and letter-name knowledge and their relation to each other and to various aspects of phonological awareness in a sample of Greek kindergarten children who did not know how to read. One hundred twenty children aged 58–69 months were assessed on letter-sound and letter-name knowledge, as well as on phonological awareness skills at the beginning, the middle and the end of kindergarten. The findings indicated that: (a) kindergarten children knew more letter-sounds than letter-names in almost every case across the assessment points; (b) letter-sound knowledge predicted letter-name knowledge slightly better than vice versa; (c) phonological awareness was associated directly with later letter-sound and letter-name knowledge, and (d) the bidirectional hypothesis between phonological awareness and letters knowledge was not confirmed.

In the present study we investigated the extent to which child level factors (i.e., phonological awareness) and letter level factors (i.e., letter name structures, letter frequency, visual similarity, and letter order) contributed to letter name and sound acquisition, using data from Korean-speaking children ( N  = 169) and cross-classified multilevel model. The results showed that (1) a relatively large amount of variance is attributable to letter differences; (2) letter feature variables, letter name structure variable in particular, explained a large amount of variance attributable to differences among letters for letter-name knowledge; (3) letter feature variables other than letter name structure were not consistently related to letter-name or -sound knowledge; (4) phonological awareness was consistently related to letter-name and -sound knowledge; and (5) letter-name knowledge was somewhat inconsistent in its relation to letter-sound knowledge. The results are discussed in light of language or script general versus specific factors and instructional environment in letter name and sound acquisition.

Dezenove adultos que não haviam começado a ler foram solicitados a escrever uma lista de palavras da melhor maneira que pudessem. De modo geral, suas escritas foram compostas de letras cujo nome podia ser claramente detectado na pronúncia das palavras (e.g., a escrita IU para chinelo ). Esses resultados sugerem que adultos iletrados utilizam seu conhecimento do nome das letras para conectar a escrita à fala. Como parece ocorrer entre crianças, o uso dessa estratégia resultou, algumas vezes, em escritas \"silábicas\", isto é, escritas em que o número de letras corresponde ao número de sílabas na pronúncia da palavra.Nineteen adults who did not know how to read were asked to spell a list of words as well as possible. In general, their spellings consisted of letters whose names could be clearly heard in the pronunciation of the word (e.g., the spelling I and U for chinelo, in which the names of the letters i and u can be detected in the pronunciation of the word). These results suggest that illiterate adults use their knowledge of letter names to connect print to speech. Similar to what has been observed among preschool children, the use of this strategy resulted, sometimes, in so-called \"syllabic\" spellings, that is, spellings in which the number of letters correspond to the number of syllables in the pronunciation of the word.

This study investigates the reading strategies that are used by individuals with Down syndrome when they begin to learn to read Portuguese. Individuals with Down syndrome who knew or did not know the name of the letters learned to read two types of simplified spellings: phonetic spellings in which the letters corresponded to sounds in the pronunciation of words (e.g., BTRA for beterraba 'beet'), and visual spellings in which the letters bore no relationship to sounds in the pronunciation of words, but which were visually more outstanding (e.g., UQLG for detetive 'detective'). Results questioned the view that individuals with Down syndrome learn to read visually. The individuals who did not know the name of the letters found both type of spellings very difficult. In contrast, the individuals who knew the name of the letters learned the phonetic spellings more easily than the visual spellings.

Four to 5-year-old children were asked to spell pairs of words beginning with the same letter and consonant sound. For each pair, the entire name or part of the name of the initial letter could be heard in the pronunciation of one of the words (e.g., telefone; limão), but not in the pronunciation of the other (e.g., tartaruga; laranja). The children spelled the first letter correctly more frequently for words such as telefone than for words such as tartaruga, suggesting that children use their knowledge of letter names to connect print to speech. The implications of these findings for our understanding of the development of children's invented spellings are discussed. In particular, we question Ferreiro's interpretation of a type of spelling that is observed among young speakers of Spanish and Portuguese – the so-called syllabic spelling.

Dezenove adultos que não haviam começado a ler foram solicitados a escrever uma lista de palavras da melhor maneira que pudessem. De modo geral, suas escritas foram compostas de letras cujo nome podia ser claramente detectado na pronúncia das palavras (e.g., a escrita IU para chinelo ). Esses resultados sugerem que adultos iletrados utilizam seu conhecimento do nome das letras para conectar a escrita à fala. Como parece ocorrer entre crianças, o uso dessa estratégia resultou, algumas vezes, em escritas \"silábicas\", isto é, escritas em que o número de letras corresponde ao número de sílabas na pronúncia da palavra.