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Related Experiment Videos

Age changes in the missing-letter effect revisited.

Jean Saint-Aubin1, Raymond M Klein, Tina Landry

  • 1School of Psychology, Université de Moncton, Moncton, New Brunswick, Canada E1A 3E9. saint-aj@umoncton.ca

Journal of Experimental Child Psychology
|May 14, 2005
PubMed
Summary

Children’s reading development shows an increasing sensitivity to word function, not word frequency, when detecting missing letters. This developmental shift impacts how they process familiar words during reading.

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Area of Science:

  • Developmental Psychology
  • Cognitive Psychology
  • Educational Psychology

Background:

  • Reading involves processing word function (e.g., 'of', 'the') and word frequency (how often a word appears).
  • Previous research indicates adults' missing-letter effect is influenced by both word function and frequency.
  • Developmental studies on children's missing-letter effects are limited by methodological constraints.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate how word function and word frequency influence the missing-letter effect in children across development.
  • To clarify whether developmental changes in the missing-letter effect are driven by word function, word frequency, or both.

Main Methods:

  • Experiments 1 and 2 employed a letter detection task with children (Grades 1-7) and undergraduates, overcoming prior methodological limitations.

Related Experiment Videos

  • Participants identified target letters embedded in words varying in function and frequency.
  • Experiment 3 collected normative predictability data for sentence structures.

    • Main Results:

    • The influence of word function on the missing-letter effect significantly increased with age.
    • The effect of word frequency remained relatively stable across all age groups.
    • Third graders and undergraduates demonstrated similar abilities in predicting sentence function slots.

    Conclusions:

    • The growing impact of word function on the missing-letter effect reflects developmental improvements in language and literacy skills.
    • Word frequency's influence on this effect is established early and remains consistent throughout development.
    • Findings highlight the increasing role of grammatical context processing in reading development.