Learning to Spell Phonologically: Influences of Children’s Own Names

Young spellers must learn to symbolize the sounds in words with phonologically appropriate letters. Do children use their knowledge about their own names to do this, performing better on sound–letter correspondences in their name than expected on the basis of other factors? According to some theories, children learn the spelling of their name as a rote form and do not derive conceptual knowledge from the name that transfers to other items. Analyzing data from studies in which 565 U.S. 3- to 6-year-old children spelled words or nonwords, however, we found that children who had begun to represent some sounds in their spelling used the initial sound–letter correspondence of their first name in an appropriate manner more often than otherwise expected. The results shed new light on the role of personal names in spelling development and have implications for early literacy instruction and assessment.