title: Young children's knowledge about printed names.
abstract: Four experiments examined young children's knowledge about the visual characteristics of writing, specifically personal names. Children younger than 4 years of age, even those who could read no simple words, showed some knowledge about the horizontal orientation of English names, the Latin letters that make them up, and their left-to-right directionality. Preschoolers also had some familiarity with the shapes of the letters in their own first name, especially the leftmost letter. Knowledge of the conventional capitalization pattern for English names emerged later, after a period during which children preferred names in all uppercase letters. When tested with personal names, the kind of word they know best, young children are surprisingly knowledgeable about the visual characteristics of writing.
authors: Department of Psychology, Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri, USA. rtreiman@wustl.edu
authors: Rebecca
authors: R
authors: Treiman
authors: Jeremy
authors: J
authors: Cohen
authors: Kevin
authors: K
authors: Mulqueeny
authors: Brett
authors: B
authors: Kessler
authors: Suzanne
authors: S
authors: Schechtman
mesh_terms: D000367:Age Factors; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003210:Concept Formation; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007804:Language Development; D008297:Male; D009949:Orientation; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual; D011932:Reading; D012660:Semantics; D014706:Verbal Learning; D014956:Writing