Treiman Rebecca, Mulqueeny Kevin, Kessler Brett
Psychology Department, Washington University in St. Louis.
Psychology Department, University of Chicago.
Writ Syst Res. 2015 Jul 1;7(2):235-244. doi: 10.1080/17586801.2014.924386.
Children who are knowledgeable about the basic properties of writing when formal literacy instruction begins are better prepared to benefit from that instruction than children who know less about this topic. In the present study, we examined U.S. preschoolers' knowledge about one aspect of writing: its spatial arrangement. Our participants, who had a mean age of 4 years, 2 months and who could not read any words in a list of simple words, were significantly above the level of chance at determining that horizontally arranged strings of letters are more like the writing in books than are letters with vertical, diagonal, or scattered arrangements. Contrary to the theory that children learn about the characteristics of writing that hold true in all writing systems before they learn about the characteristics that are specific to their own writing system, young children did not show a priority for vertical arrangements. The results are more consistent with the hypothesis that preschoolers apply their statistical learning skills to the spatial layout of writing.
在开始接受正式读写教学时，对书写基本特性有所了解的儿童比那些对此了解较少的儿童更有准备从该教学中受益。在本研究中，我们考察了美国学龄前儿童对书写一个方面的知识：其空间排列。我们的参与者平均年龄为4岁2个月，且无法认读简单单词列表中的任何单词，他们在判断水平排列的字母串比垂直、对角或分散排列的字母更像书中的文字时，显著高于随机水平。与儿童在了解自己书写系统特有的特征之前先学习所有书写系统共有的书写特征这一理论相反，幼儿并未表现出对垂直排列的偏好。这些结果与学龄前儿童将其统计学习技能应用于书写空间布局这一假设更为一致。
