Phonological and semantic processes influence beginning readers' ability to learn to read words

Children (4 to 6 years of age) were taught to associate printed 3- or 4-let ter abbreviations, or cues, with spoken words (e.g., bfr for beaver). All b ut 1 of the letters in the cue corresponded to phonemes in the spoken targe t word. Two types of cues were constructed: phonetic cues, in which the med ial letter was phonetically similar to the target word, and control cues, i n which the central phoneme was phonetically dissimilar. In Experiment 1, c hildren learned the phonetic cues better than the control cues, and learnin g correlated with measures of phonological skill and knowledge of the meani ngs of the words taught. In Experiment 2, the target words differed on a se mantic variable-imageability-and learning was influenced by both the phonet ic properties of the cue and the imageability of the words used, (C) 1999 A cademic Press.