ABSTRACT
Understanding the acquisition of literacy can be regarded as an attempt to understand the nature of the mental representations that underlie the relationship between print and speech, and how these representations are modified during the course of the acquisition of reading and spelling skills. These changing mental representations have been examined most closely during and following the period of time that children receive formal instruction (e.g., Brown & Loosemore, 1994; Hulme, Snowling, & Quinlan, 1991; Plaut, McClelland, Seidenberg, & Patterson, 1996; Seidenberg & McClelland, 1989), but there is increasing interest in the nature of print–speech representations before children have learned to read or spell any words accurately (e.g., Barron, 1986, 1991, 1994; Bowey, 1994; Byrne, 1992; Ehri 1978, 1979, 1983, 1984, 1992, 1993; Perfetti, 1992; Rack, Hulme, Snowling, & Wightman, 1994; Stahl & Murray, 1994). Attempts to characterize these early, proto-literate representations may play a role in identifying the specific knowledge about print and speech that predicts successful acquisition of reading and spelling skill, and may also assist in efforts to resolve a controversy that is a central issue in this chapter—the nature of the relationship between phonological awareness and literacy.
