WASHINGTON – Celebrate your child’s scribbles. A novel experiment shows that even before learning their ABCs, youngsters start to recognize that a written word symbolizes language in a way a drawing doesn’t – a developmental step on the path to reading.
Researchers used a puppet, line drawings and simple vocabulary to find that children as young as 3 are beginning to grasp that nuanced concept.
“Children at this very early age really know a lot more than we had previously thought,” said developmental psychologist Rebecca Treiman of Washington University in St. Louis, who co-authored the study.
The research published in the journal Child Development suggests an additional way to consider reading readiness, beyond the emphasis on phonetics or being able to point out an “A” in the alphabet chart.
Appreciating that writing is “something that stands for something else, it actually is a vehicle for language – that’s pretty powerful stuff,” said Temple University psychology professor Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, a specialist in literacy development who wasn’t involved in the new work.
And tots’ own scribbling is practice.
What a child calls a family portrait may look like a bunch of grapes but “those squiggles, that ability to use lines to represent something bigger, to represent something deeper than what is on that page, is the great open door into the world of symbolic thought,” Hirsh-Pasek said.
The idea: At some point, children learn that a squiggle on a page represents something, and then that the squiggle we call text has a more specific meaning than what we call a drawing. “Dog,” for example, should be read the same way each time, while a canine drawing might appropriately be labeled a dog, or a puppy, or even their pet Rover.
Treiman and colleagues tested 114 preschoolers, 3- to 5-year-olds who hadn’t received any formal instruction in reading or writing. Some youngsters were shown words such as dog, cat or doll, sometimes in cursive to rule out guessing if kids recognized a letter. Other children were shown simple drawings of those objects. Researchers would say what the word or drawing portrayed. Then they’d bring out a puppet and ask the children if they thought the puppet knew what the words or drawings were.
If the puppet indicated the word “doll” was “baby” or “dog” was “puppy,” many children said the puppet was mistaken. But they more often accepted synonyms for the drawings, showing they were starting to understand that written words have a far more specific meaning than a drawing, Treiman said.
Language is “like a zoom lens on the world,” said Hirsh-Pasek. This study shows “even 3-year-olds know there’s something special about written words.”
It’s not clear if kids who undergo that developmental step at a later age – say, 5 or 6 instead of 3 or 4 – might go on to need extra help with learning to read, said Brett Miller, early learning specialist at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, which helped fund the research. But because some children did better than others in the experiment, Treiman plans to study that.
Scientists have long known that reading to very young children helps form the foundation for them to later learn to read, by introducing vocabulary, rhyming and different speech sounds.
But it’s important to include other activities that bring in writing, too, Treiman said. Look closely at a tot’s scribbles. A child might say, “I’m writing my name,” and eventually the crayon scribble can become smaller and closer to the line than the larger scrawl that the tot proclaims is a picture of a flower or mom, she said.
“It’s very exciting to see this develop,” she said.
Previous studies have shown it’s helpful to run a finger under the text when reading to a youngster, because otherwise kids pay more attention to the pictures, Miller said. If the words aren’t pointed out, “they get less exposure to looking at text, and less opportunity to learn that sort of relationship – that text is meaningful and text relates to sound,” he said.
Make sure children see that you write for a purpose, maybe by having them tell you a story and watch you write it out, said Hirsh-Pasek. “That’s much richer than just learning what a B or a P is.”
Language tips for kids
Reading to very young children is crucial to help them eventually learn to read. But researchers studying how kids begin to understand that text conveys meaning differently than pictures – an important concept for reading readiness – say parents should pay attention to writing, too.
Some suggestions:
Run a finger under the text when reading to youngsters. Otherwise, kids pay more attention to the pictures and miss an opportunity to link written words to spoken language, said Brett Miller of the National Institute for Child Health and Human Development.
Show children how you write their names well before they could attempt it, said Temple University psychology professor Kathy Hirsh-Pasek. That’s one of their first concrete examples that a mysterious squiggle on a page is a symbol for a word they know.
Often a child’s name is his or her first written word, thanks to memorizing what it looks like. Encouraging youngsters to invent their own spellings of other words could spur them to write even more, said developmental psychologist Rebecca Treiman of Washington University in St. Louis.
When youngsters scribble, don’t guess what they produced – ask, Hirsh-Pasek said. It’s pretty discouraging if a tot’s about to announce he wrote a story and mom thinks he drew a house.
Post a scribble they’re proud of on the refrigerator, she said. Children are figuring out patterns with their scribbles, and that’s more instructive than merely pasting copies of, say, apples onto a page to make a recognizable picture.
Give tots a pencil or pen instead of a crayon if they say they want to “write” rather than “draw” so it will look more like text, Treiman said.
The Associated Press
