Preschoolers' Alphabet Learning: Cognitive, Teaching Sequence and English Proficiency Influences

This study addressed two areas of inquiry: 1) the influence of enlisting three underlying cognitive learning processes (CLPs) in alphabet learning, and 2) order effects for letter name and letter sound instruction. Alphabet instruction was designed to enlist Paired Associate Learning (PAL) only, PAL plus Orthographic Learning (OL), or PAL plus Articulatory Learning (AL). Subjects were 94 preschool children in eight public preschool classrooms with low-income eligibility thresholds, including 35 dual language learners (DLLs). Children were randomly assigned within classroom to small groups that were randomly assigned to one of the three treatments, and one of two orders in which letter names and sounds were taught. Research assistants provided 10 weeks of instruction, 15 minutes/day, for four days/week. All children in the three treatments made significant growth from pretest to posttest on all measures of alphabet learning. Children in the PAL only condition had significantly higher gains than the sample average on four of five alphabet measures. Posthoc tests showed that PAL only significantly outperformed the other two conditions on four of the five measures, but only for native English-speaking children. No evidence of differences among treatments was found for DLL children. Additionally, there was no main effect for order of name or sound instruction, although teaching sounds before names was statistically significantly better in the PAL only treatment. Findings support explicit alphabet instruction emphasizing the relationship between verbal letter labels and letter forms that enlists PAL processes. [This paper will be published in "Reading Research Quarterly."]