Developmental trends in the phonemic organization of individual words.

Research with adults indicates that the visual-phonemic representation linked to individual words has a characteristic organization. This structure conforms to a serial pattern, with word beginnings functionally more important than word endings, which, in turn, are functionally more important than word middles. The present experiments were designed to identify possible developmental trends in this organization. The results of two experiments indicated that the adult pattern is apparent for nonreading first graders, but only if the words being learned are monosyllabic. Going grade by grade, the typical adult pattern for bisyllabic words did not emerge clearly until the fifth grade. These findings suggest that the serial organization for individual words is established before children learn to read, and that the pattern emerges for more complex words when they become integrated into more holistic units.