Sublexical inferences in beginning reading: Medial vowel digraphs as functional units of transfer

Two experiments evaluated young children's use of lexical inference. Experiment 1 compared transfer from shared rimes (e.g., "beak"-"peak"), or heads (e.g., "beak"-"bean"), under three conditions: (a) when both clue word pronunciation and orthography were present at transfer; (b) when only the pronunciation of the clue word was given; and (c) when the clue was pretaught. Equivalent transfer occurred in both conditions (a and b) where clue word pronunciations were provided at transfer, but no transfer was found when the clue word was pretaught (condition c). Experiment 2 investigated transfer from three pretaught clue words sharing rimes (e.g., "leak"-"peak"), or vowel digraphs (e.g., "leak"-"bean"). Children demonstrated lexical transfer under these conditions, but improvements were equivalent for vowel and rime analogous words. Results are interpreted in terms of models of vowel transfer. (C) 1998 Academic Press.