An Investigation of Visual Discrimination Training for Beginning Readers

Abstract

The act of learning to read is an associative-conceptual process. The formation of correct associations between the spoken symbol and the written symbol depends on the child's ability to make auditory and visual discriminations. This study concerned itself solely with the one factor of visual discrimination. It attempted to determine if those kindergarten students who are trained to make instant responses of recognition to the capital letters of the alphabet show a significant difference in their visual discrimination ability from those kindergarten students who did not receive this training. In analyzing the data, analysis of co-variance was used. Results showed there was significant difference (.Ol level of confidence) in visual discrimination ability between students taught to make instant responses of recognition to the capital letters of the alphabet and those who did not receive this training. It might be assumed tha t learning to make these responses enhances visual discrimination ability.