Abstract
Learning the sounds of letters is an important part of learning a writing system. Most previous studies of this process have examined English, focusing on variations in the phonetic iconicity of letter names as a reason why some letter sounds (such as that of b, where the sound is at the beginning of the letter’s name) are easier to learn than others (such as that of w, where the sound is not in the name). The present study examined Hebrew, where variations in the phonetic iconicity of letter names are minimal. In a study of 391 Israeli children with a mean age of 5 years, 10 months, we used multilevel models to examine the factors that are associated with knowledge of letter sounds. One set of factors involved letter names: Children sometimes attributed to a letter a consonant–vowel sound consisting of the first phonemes of the letter’s name. A second set of factors involved contrast: Children had difficulty when there was relatively little contrast in shape between one letter and others. Frequency was also important, encompassing both child-specific effects, such as a benefit for the first letter of a child’s forename, and effects that held true across children, such as a benefit for the first letters of the alphabet. These factors reflect general properties of human learning.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Bates, D. (2009). Computational methods for mixed models. Retrieved from http://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/lme4/vignettes/Theory.pdf.
Bolozky, S. (1999). On the special status of the vowels a and e in Israeli Hebrew. Hebrew Studies, 40, 233–250.
Bouchière, B., Ponce, C., & Foulin, J.-N. (2010). Développement de la connaissance des lettres capitales. Étude transversale chez les enfants français de trois à six ans [The development of uppercase letter knowledge. A cross-sectional study of French children aged three to six]. Psychologie Française, 55, 65–89.
Ecalle, J. (2004). Les connaissances des lettres et l’écriture du prénom chez l’enfant français avant l’enseignement formel de la lecture-écriture [Knowledge of letters and writing of the first name in French children who have not yet received formal instruction in reading and writing]. Canadian Psychology/Psychologie Canadienne, 45, 111–119.
Ellefson, M., Treiman, R., & Kessler, B. (2009). Learning to label letters by sounds or names: A comparison of England and the United States. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 102, 323–341.
Evans, M. A., & Saint-Aubin, J. (2005). What children are looking at during shared storybook reading: Evidence from eye movement monitoring. Psychological Science, 16, 913–920.
Evans, M. A., Bell, M., Shaw, D., Moretti, S., & Page, J. (2006). Letter names, letter sounds and phonological awareness: An examination of kindergarten children across letters and of letters across children. Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 19, 959–989.
Foy, J. G., & Mann, V. (2006). Changes in letter sound knowledge are associated with development of phonological awareness in pre-school children. Journal of Research in Reading, 29, 143–161.
Iversen, I., Silberberg, N. E., & Silberberg, M. C. (1970). Sex differences in knowledge of letter and number names in kindergarten. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 31, 79–85.
Justice, L. M., Pence, K., Bowles, R. B., & Wiggins, A. (2006). An investigation of four hypotheses concerning the order by which 4-year-old children learn the alphabet letters. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 21, 374–389.
Justice, L. M., Skibbe, L., Canning, A., & Lankford, C. (2005). Pre-schoolers, print and storybooks: An observational study using eye movement analysis. Journal of Research in Reading, 28, 229–243.
Kim, Y.-S., Petscher, Y., Foorman, B. R., & Zhou, C. (2010). The contributions of phonological awareness and letter-name knowledge to letter-sound acquisition—A cross-classified multilevel model approach. Journal of Educational Psychology, 102, 313–326.
Lavine, L. O. (1977). Differentiation of letterlike forms in prereading children. Developmental Psychology, 13, 89–94.
Levin, I., & Aram, D. (2004). Children’s names contribute to early literacy: A linguistic and a social perspective. In D. Ravid & H. Bat-Zeev Shyldkrot (Eds.), Perspectives on language and language development (pp. 219–239). Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer.
Levin, I., Shatil-Carmon, S., & Asif-Rave, O. (2006). Learning of letter names and sounds and their contribution to word recognition. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 93, 139–165.
Levin, I., Saiegh-Haddad, E., Hende, N., & Ziv, M. (2008). Early literacy in Arabic: An intervention study among Israeli Palestinian kindergartners. Applied Psycholinguistics, 29, 413–436.
Locker, L., Jr., Hoffman, L., & Bovaird, J. A. (2007). On the use of multilevel modeling as an alternative to items analysis in psycholinguistic research. Behavior Research Methods, 39, 723–730.
McBride-Chang, C. (1999). The ABC’s of the ABC’s: The development of letter-name and letter-sound knowledge. Merrill-Palmer Quarterly, 45, 285–308.
Piasta, S., & Wagner, R. (2010). Learning letter names and sounds: Effects of instruction, letter type, and phonological processing skill. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 105, 324–344.
Ravid, D. (2006). Hebrew orthography and literacy. In R. M. Joshi & P. G. Aaron (Eds.), Handbook of orthography and literacy (pp. 339–364). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
Robins, S., & Treiman, R. (2009). Talking about writing: What we can learn from conversations between parents and their young children. Applied Psycholinguistics, 30, 463–484.
Share, D. L. (2008). On the Anglocentricities of current reading research and practice: The perils of overreliance on an “outlier” orthography. Psychological Bulletin, 134, 584–615.
Snow, C. E., Burns, M. S., & Griffin, P. (Eds.). (1998). Preventing reading difficulties in young children. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.
Treiman, R., & Broderick, V. (1998). What’s in a name: Children’s knowledge about the letters in their own names. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 70, 97–116.
Treiman, R., & Kessler, B. (2003). The role of letter names in the acquisition of literacy. In R. Kail (Ed.), Advances in child development and behavior (Vol. 31, pp. 105–135). San Diego, CA: Academic Press.
Treiman, R., & Kessler, B. (2004). The case of case: Children’s knowledge and use of upper- and lowercase letters. Applied Psycholinguistics, 25, 413–428.
Treiman, R., & Kessler, B. (in press). Similarities among the shapes of writing and their effects on learning. Written Language and Literacy.
Treiman, R., Kessler, B., & Pollo, T. C. (2006). Learning about the letter name subset of the vocabulary: Evidence from U.S. and Brazilian preschoolers. Applied Psycholinguistics, 27, 211–227.
Treiman, R., Levin, I., & Kessler, B. (2007). Learning of letter names follows similar principles across languages: Evidence from Hebrew. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 96, 87–106.
Treiman, R., Pennington, B. F., Shriberg, L. D., & Boada, R. (2008). Which children benefit from letter names in learning letter sounds? Cognition, 106, 1322–1338.
Treiman, R., Tincoff, R., Rodriguez, K., Mouzaki, A., & Francis, D. J. (1998). The foundations of literacy: Learning the sounds of letters. Child Development, 69, 1524–1540.
Turnbull, K. L. P., Bowles, R. P., Skibbe, L. E., Justice, L. M., & Wiggins, A. K. (in press). Theoretical explanations for preschoolers’ lowercase alphabet knowledge. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research.
Wallentin, M. (2009). Putative sex differences in verbal abilities and language cortex: A critical review. Brain and Language, 108, 175–183.
Acknowledgments
This research was supported by NICHD Grant HD051610. We thank Bracha Nir-Sagiv for help with the child word frequency counts.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Treiman, R., Levin, I. & Kessler, B. Linking the shapes of alphabet letters to their sounds: the case of Hebrew. Read Writ 25, 569–585 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11145-010-9286-3
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11145-010-9286-3