The Interrelationships among Cues Used for Word-Recognition in Context, Cues Used for Matching Nonsense Syllables in Isolation, Selected Characteristics of Children and Performance in Reading.

The major goal of this study was to investigate first grade children's ability to use initial letter, middle letter, final letter and word configuration cues to recognize words in context. Subjects were forty-six children, 23 boys and 23 girls, from both first grade classes of a private school in suburban Philadelphia. Three letter words were randomly omitted from a basal reader and the cues were inserted in their place. A matching technique with nonsense trigrams was first utilized with the children. They later were tested for use of cues in the contextual situation, and scores were obtained for the use of each cue in each situation. In addition to the main focus, this study was also concerned with the relationships between the use of cues and subsequent performance in reading. At a later date the children were tested on the word reading and paragraph meaning sections of the Stanford Achievement Test. The results indicated that the configuration cue, which had been of little value in matching trigrams, was the second most frequently used cue for successfully recognizing words in context. (Author/MKM)