Configuration as a Cue in the Word Recognition of Beginning Readers
Forty first-grade children responded to a delayed recognition matching-to-sample task involving 3–letter nonsense words. A 2X2X3 counterbalanced design involving sex, word shape (same and different), and shared letters (first, last, and none) was employed. Response words with the first letter or the last letter identical to that in the sample were chosen more often (p < . 01) than responses with no elements identical to those in the sample. Words with the same first letters were confused more often (p < . 05) than words which shared terminal letters. There was no significant main effect for shape, nor were there differences due to shape at any of the identical letter dimension levels.