An investigation to determine the existence of an order of difficulty in the association of the initial consonant sounds with the printed lower-case letter symbol in the initial position of nonsense syllables

The purpose of this study was to determine whether there was an order of difficulty in the ability of first grade children to associate initial consonant sounds with the initial letter symbols in nonsense syllables. The order of difficulty was examined on the bases of school attended, sex, section membership, mental age of the subjects, and amount of schooling. Performance was compared with the sequence of presentation of the initial consonants, the number of different words beginning with each consonant, and the frequency of all words beginning with each initial consonant introduced in the Ginn and Row Peterson basic readers used by the subjects. The subjects were first grade children from three classrooms in each of the elementary schools in Mansfield and Winnfield, Louisiana, who had not previously failed, were available for the testing, and passed vision and hearing screening teats. Thirty girls and thirty boys from each school met these standards.