Effects of Phonological Decoding Training on Children's Word Recognition of CVC, CV, and VC Structures

The effects of training in letter-sound correspondences and phonemic decoding (segmenting and blending skills) on three kindergartners' word recognition abilities were examined using a single-subject multiple-baseline design across behaviors and subjects. Whereas CVC pseudowords were trained, generalization to untrained CVC pseudowords, untrained CVC real words, untrained CV and VC pseudowords, and untrained CV and VC real words were assessed. Generalization occurred to all of the untrained constructions for two of the three subjects. The third subject did not show the same degree of generalization to VC pseudowords and real words; however, after three training sessions, this subject read all VC constructions with 100% accuracy. Findings are consistent with group training studies that have shown the benefits of decoding training on word recognition and spelling skills and with studies that have demonstrated the effects of generalization to less complex structures when more complex structures are trained.