Making concepts of print symbolic: understanding how writing represents language

Abstract

Preschool children were given an opportunity to produce pseudocursive scribbles and then assessed for their concepts of print. Prereading children who could identify letters and print their own names participated in four tasks examining their beliefs about what made written material readable. The tasks evaluated children's perceptual distinctions between writing and non-writing as well as more subtle distinctions between printed and cursive forms of writing. Children were first placed in situations that might result in their producing pseudocursive writing and then were asked questions about whether it could be read and who could read it. Following this, they solved three tasks in which they were asked to make judgements about what kinds of material could be read, who could read it, and what letters were represented in a sample of cursive writing. The tasks were progressively more difficult but showed that the children knew a lot about the forms of writing. In spite of this, virtually all the children produced pseudocursive scribbles and believed they could be read. The interpretation is that the knowledge these children have of the forms of writing does not include understanding the symbolic function by which these forms represent language.