This study explored the extent to which preschool children's name writing representations reflected their more general emergent literacy knowledge in print and phonological awareness. As part of a preschool literacy screening program, 3,546 4-year-old children were administered a name writing task and additional indices of emergent literacy. Children were placed into four groups based on the level of their name-writing representations. The four groups were compared for performance on alphabet knowledge, concept of word, print knowledge, rhyme awareness, and beginning sound awareness tasks. The four name-writing groups significantly differed from one another on each of these dependent measures. Additionally, a regression analysis showed the linear combination of the five emergent literacy indices to significantly predict level of name writing representation, accounting for 36% of the variance in outcome. Print-related skills (alphabet knowledge, print concepts), in addition to age, accounted for 34% of this variance. While findings suggest that name writing representations can differentiate children in both phonological and print awareness, name writing representations appear to predominantly reflect print-related knowledge.
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