Effects of distinctive-feature training and instructional technique on letter and form discrimination

Techniques for facilitating alphabet letter discrimination were investigated within the framework of distinctive feature and attention theory. To compare the effectiveness of three instructional procedures for emphasizing distinctive features, experimenters gave separate groups of children either distinctive-feature training, high-lighting of the features, or distinctive-feature training plus fading-in of the letter forms, along with a control, for each of three dimensions. The horizontal-slant, open-close, and straight-curve dimensions were chosen for study. Training effects were assessed by presenting corresponding alphabet letter pairs (H-N, C-O, U-V) and two sets of generalization forms. Results indicated that the three experimental groups perfomed better than the control, but did not differ from each other. All groups except fade-in readily generalized to other forms. These findings were discussed in terms of the educational value of distinctive feature analyses and the use of instructional methods.