Theoretical explanations for preschoolers' lowercase alphabet knowledge.
OBJECTIVE
Letter knowledge is a key aspect of children's language development, yet relatively little research has aimed to understand the nature of lowercase letter knowledge. We considered 4 hypotheses about children's lowercase letter knowledge simultaneously--uppercase familiarity, uppercase-lowercase similarity, own-name advantage, and frequency in printed English--as well as 3 interactions.


METHODS
Participants were 461 children ranging in age from 3 to 5 years, all of whom attended public preschool programs serving primarily children from low-income homes, who completed a letter naming task.


RESULTS
Uppercase familiarity was the strongest predictor of children's lowercase alphabet knowledge; children were more than 16 times more likely to know a lowercase letter if they knew the corresponding uppercase letter. Uppercase-lowercase similarity and frequency in printed English also predicted children's lowercase letter knowledge, as did the interaction between uppercase familiarity and own-name advantage and the interaction between uppercase familiarity and uppercase-lowercase similarity.


CONCLUSIONS
Findings suggest that transference from uppercase letter knowledge may be a primary mechanism for lowercase letter knowledge and that young children's knowledge of the lowercase alphabet letters is multiply determined.
Pence Turnbull
Khara L
KL
Department of Psychology, 298C Psychology Building, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 48824-1116, USA.
Bowles
Ryan P
RP
Skibbe
Lori E
LE
Justice
Laura M
LM
Wiggins
Alice K
AK
D002663:Child Language; D002675:Child, Preschool; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007804:Language Development; D016015:Logistic Models; D008297:Male; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D010700:Phonetics; D011932:Reading; D013663:Teaching