Children's sensitivity to intraword redundancy in spoken words.

Kindergarten, third-grade and fifth-grade children were tested on a same-different auditory discrimination task. Stimuli consisted of familiar and unfamiliar 3-letter words which were subdivided into high and low positional frequency word pairs. Analysis of correct same and different judgments supported the hypothesis that prereaders who have had normal language experiences develop sensitivities to intraword-redundancy relations. Children made significantly more correct same or different judgments when word pairs were high rather than low in summed positional frequency.