The Development of Automatic Word Recognition Skills 1

Abstract

Kindergarteners, first graders, and third graders performed a discrete-trial Stroop task in which they named the colors of stimuli that either matched or did not match items that were being concurrently held in memory. Letters, high-frequency words, and low-frequency words were used as stimuli. There was a developmental trend toward the color being named faster when the stimulus matched the item held in memory. This finding was unexpected. While the color-naming times of the first and third graders did not depend on stimulus type, the kindergarteners named colors slower when the stimuli were letters and showed a tendency to respond slower to high-frequency words than to low-frequency words. Apparently, the kindergarteners had fully automated the recognition of only the letters and were beginning to automate the recognition of high-frequency words. In contrast, the older children had automated the recognition of letters, high-frequency words, and low-frequency words to an equal extent.