Modality effects and the development of the word length effect in children

Two experiments investigated the development of the word length effect in c hildren aged 4 to 10 years, comparing auditory and visual stimuli. The ques tion addressed was whether word length effects emerged earlier with auditor y presentation or visual presentation, or whether they emerged at the same age regardless of presentation modality. Results provided evidence that wor d length effects emerge earlier with visual than auditory presentation. The implication of our results is that with visual presentation, 4-year-olds e ngage in some form of verbalisation strategy that involves obtaining phonol ogical representations of picture names and mapping them on to articulatory output plans. This strategy is clearly verbal in nature, but is not necess arily characterised as cumulative verbal rehearsal.