Pictures Block the Learning of Sightwords

Abstract

Young children were taught to name 12 single words, six in the presence of appropriate pictures (compound stimuli) and six in their absence (simple stimuli). There were two compound conditions: one in which the picture was a large line drawing above a small printed word (enhanced salience condition) and one in which it was a small line drawing below a large printed word (reduced salience condition); and two corresponding simple conditions of a large word alone (enhanced salience condition) and a small word alone (reduced salience condition). Each child experienced all four conditions with three different words in each condition in a series of randomly ordered learning and test trials, until each child achieved the criterion of three consecutive correct responses for each of the words in at least one of the conditions. Two experimental studies were completed with 16 children in each, and the percentage of correct responses was calculated for each presentation condition. Comparisons of the compound (picture) and simple (no‐picture) conditions showed that twice as many words were correctly recognised in the simple (no‐picture) conditions in both experiments. No reliable differences were detected between the different levels of salience, and it was concluded that prior association between the picture and the naming response to the picture ‘blocked’ the acquisition of a new association between the written word and the naming response to it.