Word Superiority and Word Shape Effects in Beginning Readers

Abstract

It has been found that words are sometimes perceived with greater ease than letters and that word shape, which is based on the location of ascending and descending lower case letters, sometimes plays a role in the perception of words. Though the evidence for both these notions is restricted to adults, Haber and Haber (1981a) have recently argued for the importance of word shape for beginning readers without actually using children as subjects. In the present study, forty Israeli kindergarteners learned to "read" either words or single letters in either upper or lower-case Roman characters. Subjects were taught to "read" all stimuli as names of objects. It was found that single letters were learned better than whole words indicating that for beginning readers the letter is more of a perceptual unit than the word. Words in lower-case letters were not learned better than ones in all capitals, further supporting the view that beginners do not rely on word shape in their reading.