Improving perception of letters and visual structure of language

Information about letters and the physical structure of language printed in Roman characters was given to children beginning to read. Experimental investigations coupled three alternative graphic modes of printing upper- and lower-case letters with an instructional intervention termed "Alpha-Beta" which provides practice in letter sorting, matching of letters, associative matching, and memory matching. In respect to graphics, Mode A letters were in standard alphabet form. Mode B provided standard letters with each backed by a unique half-tone (Visually Stippled Alphabet); Mode C provided standard letters with each backed by a unique visual texture (Visually Patterned Alphabet). Pre-posttest change in reading readiness was measured using the Metropolitan Readiness Test. In the first study 224 English-speaking 5- to 6-yr.-old children were tested. In the second there were 158 Spanish-speaking girls and boys 6 to 7 years old. It was predicted that Alpha-Beta intervention involving visually patterned alphabet would lead to the greatest increases in readiness scores. This is confirmed in both studies for children low in reading readiness preexperiment. Children high in reading readiness are less affected. The second experiment involved Spanish-speaking children and investigated intervention by Alpha-Beta against a no-intervention control. This confirms the value of Alpha-Beta per se. Possible explanations for the improvements are identified.