Orthographic Support for Verb Identification in Typically Developing Three-Year-Old Children

Orthographic Support for Verb Identification in Typically Developing Three-Year-Old Children | Research Square window.SnipcartSettings = { analytics: { enabled: false } }; (function() { var accessVector = localStorage.getItem('access_vector') || ''; window.dataLayer = window.dataLayer || []; if (accessVector) { window.dataLayer.push({ user: { profile: { profileInfo: { snid: accessVector } } } }); } })(); (function(w,d,s,l,i){w[l]=w[l]||[];w[l].push({'gtm.start':new Date().getTime(),event:'gtm.js'});var f=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],j=d.createElement(s),dl=l!='dataLayer'?'&l='+l:'';j.async=true;j.src='https://www.googletagmanager.com/gtm.js?id='+i+dl;f.parentNode.insertBefore(j,f);})(window,document,'script','dataLayer','GTM-K279D39R'); Browse Preprints In Review Journals COVID-19 Preprints AJE Video Bytes Research Tools Research Promotion AJE Professional Editing AJE Rubriq About Preprint Platform In Review Editorial Policies Our Team Advisory Board Help Center Sign In Submit a Preprint Cite Share Download PDF Research Article Orthographic Support for Verb Identification in Typically Developing Three-Year-Old Children Grace Clark, Christina Reuterskiöld This is a preprint; it has not been peer reviewed by a journal. https://doi.org/ 10.21203/rs.3.rs-7473723/v1 This work is licensed under a CC BY 4.0 License Status: Posted Version 1 posted You are reading this latest preprint version Abstract Children, as young as four years of age, have demonstrated enhanced noun learning when presented with orthographic representations during word learning tasks. This study sought to determine if three-year-old typically developing children would demonstrate an orthographic facilitation effect during an asynchronous computer-based verb learning task. One-hundred ten children were taught 8 novel verbs by presenting videos of novel actions paired with novel labels in sentence frames. Four novel verbs were taught with orthographic support present and four were taught without orthographic support. Participants were exposed to the words a total of two times and then given a post-test to assess identification and word recognition. Additionally, we gathered data on letter identification ability and parent-reported measures of literacy interest and experiences. Participants demonstrated no orthographic facilitation effect for learning verbs, but a marginally significant increase in sight word recognition from pretest to posttest when orthographic representations were present during the exposure phase. Most children were able to identify the letters used in the experiment; however, we lack information on required literacy skills underlying benefits from orthographic representations during word learning tasks. Certain literacy skills, extending beyond letter identification, may be essential for children to benefit from orthographic support. Future research will incorporate additional literacy skill measures, such as letter-sound correspondence and word decoding, to further elucidate specific skills necessary for optimal outcomes in orthography-supported noun and verb learning tasks. Audiology & Speech-Language Pathology Educational Psychology Psychology verb learning orthographic facilitation vocabulary acquisition typical development Figures Figure 1 Figure 2 Figure 3 Figure 4 Figure 5 Figure 6 Figure 7 Figure 8 Introduction Research has demonstrated that for nouns, presenting the written form alongside saying and showing the item, facilitates word learning for children (e.g., Chambrè et al., 2017 ; O’Leary & Ehri, 2020 ; Salins et al., 2023 ; Zhang et al., 2023 ). This is referred to as the orthographic facilitation effect. These findings reinforce the interconnectedness of literacy and language skills and how spoken and written forms interact. At the center of literacy and language skills are spelling and word reading skills (Kamhi & Catts, 2012). Growth in language aids growth in reading skills and vice-versa, since reading and listening and writing and speaking are parallel processes that are heavily intertwined. The more a child reads, the more their vocabulary and other language skills grow, which then, in turn, benefits academic achievement. The Orthographic Facilitation Effect When researchers provide orthographic support during noun learning tasks, children perform better on post-tests for picture naming and identification tasks compared to an orthography absent condition. This is true despite the absence of any orthographic cues in these post-tests. Children as young as four years of age benefit from orthographic representations during noun learning tasks (O’Leary & Ehri, 2020 ). Preschool-age children learned proper names consisting of consonant-vowel (CV) combinations (e.g., LU) with and without orthographic representations present during the exposure phase. For words taught with orthographic representations present, participants were more accurate in naming the characters at post-test compared to character names taught without orthographic representation. Although these children were unable to decode words, they had sufficient alphabetic knowledge to use CV labels to aid memorization. We also see an orthographic facilitation effect in children from a variety of clinical populations, including autism spectrum disorder (ASD), Down syndrome, developmental language disorder (DLD), and dyslexia (e.g., Mengoni et al., 2013 ; Ricketts et al., 2015 ; Baron et al., 2018 ; for review, see Clark & Reuterskiöld, 2021 ). This effect is also evident in minimally speaking autistic 1 children (Clark & Reuterskiöld, 2023 ) in noun identification post-test tasks. Theoretical Considerations The lexical quality hypothesis (Perfetti & Hart, 2002 ) states that when a word is known in multiple domains (e.g., phonological, orthographic, and semantic), it is easily activated, retrieved, and produced; on the other hand, when a word has poor representations or in fewer domains, it is more difficult to retrieve and produce. Thus, when teaching an unfamiliar word with orthographic support, the clinician or teacher is adding another layer of representational support and solidifying the child’s representations. High quality representations in one domain allow for easier activation in another domain (e.g., producing the spelling is easier when you are certain of the word’s phonology). Orthographic representations are also a non-transient signal that children can process for a longer duration than the acoustic information in the speech signal (Ricketts et al., 2009 ). When 1 We use identify-first language to describe autistic individuals rather than person-first language (e.g., person with autism) because of the wishes of autistic adults (e.g., Bottema-Beutel et al., 2021 ; Kenny et al., 2016 ). the text representation is presented alongside a picture of the novel object, children have time to process the orthographic information and to make connections with the phonological representation. When a novel word is only presented auditorily, a child must immediately process the phonological information; if the child is not attending or engaged, this information can be easily missed. The orthographic representation thus provides a non-transient signal to bind the phonological and orthographic information. The Importance of Verb Learning While the orthographic facilitation effect is well-researched for noun learning, few studies have investigated novel verb learning. We know that verb learning is distinct from and more difficult than noun learning (e.g., Imai et al., 2008 ; Arunachalam & Waxman, 2011 ; 2015 ). Verbs, unlike nouns, describe a relationship between an agent and an object. The object or agent can change, but the action remains the same. Verbs are a large part of children’s early vocabulary (Bloom et al., 1993 ) and are essential to build sentences (Tomasello, 1992 ). While noun learning has been emphasized in the orthographic facilitation research (e.g., Alt et al., 2019 ; Baron et al., 2018 ; Chambrè et al., 2017 ; O’Leary & Ehri, 2020 ; Ricketts et al., 2015 ; Salins et al., 2023 ; Zhang et al., 2023 ), nouns only comprise approximately one-third of a child’s early vocabulary (Bloom et al., 1993 ). With verbs, children can produce new pragmatic intentions such as directing action, requesting an action, and obtaining attention (Lahey, 1988 ). Thus, verbs are important to study empirically. In previous research on orthographic facilitation, four studies have included some non-noun stimuli: Chambrè and colleagues ( 2017 ) included one verb, Lucas and Norbury ( 2014 ) included one adjective, Zhang and colleagues ( 2023 ) included several adjectives and one verb, and Svaldi and colleagues ( 2024 ) included 20 verbs. Because there are so few verbs used as stimuli in studies of orthographic facilitation, we do not know if verbs will demonstrate an orthographic facilitation effect as well. The one documented study of verbs found null results for providing orthographic representations (Svaldi et al., 2024 ); however, this study did not measure spelling or sight word recognition, so it is difficult to determine if the participants attended to the orthographic representations during animation scenes. We do not yet know if children can listen to a sentence containing a novel verb, see the orthographic representation, and parse the sentence to make connections between the phonology and orthography. Previous studies have demonstrated that typically developing (TD) children learn verbs best when the verb is placed in a sentence frame with a fully specified noun phrase (e.g., “The girl is gorping a cat.;” Arunachalam & Waxman, 2011 , 2015 ). We do not know if we present the word “ gorping” while the child hears a sentence frame if verb learning will increase. Our original goal was to investigate this with minimally speaking school-age autistic 1 children. As so little research on verb learning with orthographic support has been completed with TD populations, however, we first wanted to ask our questions with a TD population. We chose preschool-age children as our sample population because previous research has used this age group as a first step toward establishing the foundational knowledge necessary to expand interventions to children with complex communication needs (e.g., Drager et al., 2004 ; O’Neill et al., 2019 ; Thistle & Wilkinson, 2017 ; Wainwright et al., 2020 ; Worah et al., 2015 ). This allows us to explore orthographic facilitation with verbs without the confounding effects of motor, sensory, perceptual, and/or communication differences exhibited by some autistic individuals (Drager et al., 2003 ). We chose three-year-old children as they are still in the process of learning language in a way that may parallel the language development of minimally speaking autistic individuals (Gernsbacher et al., 2016 ). TD three-year-old children understand approximately 1,000 to 3,000 words and produce approximately 800 to 1,000 words. They are beginning to speak about concepts beyond the here-and-now and starting to use a wider variety of increasingly complex semantic and syntactic combinations (Labrell et al., 2014 ). Additionally, there is some variability in letter identification skills and print knowledge at this age (Chaney, 1992 ). O’Leary and Ehri ( 2020 ) demonstrated an orthographic facilitation effect with 4- and 5-year-old children who could name most of the letters of the alphabet but read very few words (on average, approximately one word); thus, it is possible that 3-year-old children can also benefit from orthographic representations during word learning if they are able to name or identify some of the alphabet. Knowing how orthography impacts children in the early stages of language development will inform the adaptation of vocabulary intervention strategies for children with complex communication needs in future studies. Overview of the Present Study The overarching goal of this study was to determine if exposure to a video plus speech plus text condition (orthography present) improves verb learning compared to a video plus speech condition (orthography absent) for TD three-year old children. This was a first step toward determining whether preschoolers can parse out the orthographic representation from a sentence frame when learning novel verbs. We also determined if a child’s literacy skills and interests moderated any potential orthographic facilitation effects. Additionally, we determined if three-year old children can ‘fast-map’ mental graphemic representations (Apel et al., 2006 ) by administering a sight word recognition pre- and post-test of the targeted words. We hypothesized that TD three-year olds would be more accurate in a verb identification task when those verbs had been taught in the presence of their orthographic representations. Additionally, we hypothesized that children would benefit more from the presence of orthographic representations when they have more letter interest and that, on average, children would create mental graphemic representations and be able to identify words taught in the orthography present condition in a sight word recognition post-test. Our research questions were: Does an orthography present condition result in higher accuracy in a verb identification task compared to an orthography absent condition in TD three-year-old children? Does a child’s relative benefit from the presence of a written word vary according to age, letter identification abilities, and/or parent-reported literacy interest? Do TD three-year old children improve in sight word recognition from pre-test to post-test when verbs are shown in an orthography present condition compared to an orthography absent condition? Because it may be difficult for three-year-old children to sit for an experiment that investigates both verb learning and sight word acquisition, two cohorts were recruited. Cohort A answered questions 1 and 2; Cohort B answered question 3. More participants were assigned to Cohort A to provide more statistical power to answer research questions 1 and 2. Method This study was approved by the Institutional Review Board at [insert University name] (IRB- FY2023-7933). Participants provided parental permission and informed consent via video and had the option to pause or exit the study if their child indicated a withdrawal of consent. Participants One-hundred ten preschool-age TD children (ages 3;0 to 3;11; mean = 3.53 years) were recruited from the United States and divided unevenly into two cohorts (Cohort A- 75 participants and Cohort B- 35 participants). Inclusion criteria were: 1) between ages 3;0 to 3;11, 2) no previous speech and language therapy, 3) hearing and vision within normal limits or corrected to be so, 4) no intellectual or cognitive impairments, and 5) English as their primary language. We expected approximately 15% attrition from the recruited sample. 72 participants consented to participate in Cohort A; however, 13 did not complete all tasks, 8 were receiving speech-language therapy services, 8 had a dominant language other than English, 2 failed to respond in the pointing familiarization phase, and 4 had technical difficulties. As some children fit multiple exclusionary criteria, the final participant count for Cohort A was 50 participants. 38 participants consented to participate in Cohort B; we lost 5 participants due to incomplete responses, 3 participants due to a history of speech-language services, and 1 due to a dominant language other than English. The final count was 32 participants. See Table 1 for a summary of participant characteristics. Table 1 Demographics and Participant Characteristics Participant Characteristics Cohort A Mean (SD) (N = 50) Cohort B Mean (SD) (N = 32) Chronological Age (Years) 3.52 (.30) 3.54 (.27) Gender 27 Male 23 Female 15 Male 17 Female Letter Identification Skills* 6.92 (1.54) 6.56 (2.09) Parent-Reporting Reading Interest + 21.68 (3.1) 21.94 (2.82) Race/Ethnicity 43 White 8 Black or African American 7 Asian 4 Hispanic, Latino, or Spanish origin 1 American Indian 13 Mixed Race/Ethnicity 25 White 6 Black or African American 6 Asian 4 Hispanic, Latino, or Spanish origin 1 American Indian 3 Another Race 13 Mixed Race/ Ethnicity Location 15 North 13 Midwest 11 South 9 West 12 North 6 Midwest 4 South 9 West Parent Education Level 3 Less than college 19 Bachelor’s level 28 Professional degree or higher 1 Less than college 9 Bachelor’s level 21 Professional degree or higher Note : Abbreviations: SD = standard deviation; not all participants reported demographic information *Scores are based on a letter identification two-alternative forced choice task with a minimum score of 0 and a maximum score of 8. + See Appendix A for the complete parent report questionnaire. The maximum score a child could receive was 27. ‘Yes’ responses were scored as 1 and ‘No’ responses were scored as 0. The questionnaire was based on Boudreau ( 2005 ). Materials Word Lists Participants learned two lists, each containing four verbs, with each list taught in one of two conditions (orthography present or absent). Novel words and actions were used as prior exposure to verbs is difficult to control. Additionally, because properties of the lexical items matter, all words were intransitive novel verbs that have low neighborhood density. Based on this criteria, the following eight novel nonwords were selected: /bʌp/, /daʊf/, /gɛʃ/, /faʊp/ (List A) and /baɪʃ/, /dɔɪp/, /gaʊb/, /fɑf/ (List B; Gupta et al., 2014). The nonwords were balanced across lists for first consonant sound, presence of a digraph, number of phonemes, and number of syllables. Based on the spellings provided by twelve adult native English speakers from an auditory sample, spellings were bupping, daufing, geshing, falping (List A) and bishing, doiping, gaubing, and faffing (List B). Words were spelled using uppercase letters based on prior research from O’Leary and Ehri ( 2020 ) in an orthographic facilitation experiment with preschool-aged children. Each nonword was randomly assigned to a novel action from the GestuRe and ACtion Exemplar (GRACE) video database (Aussems et al., 2018 ). This database’s videos have been used to study verb learning in two-to-four-year-old children across three studies (Aussems & Kita, 2019 , 2021 ; Aussems et al., 2022 ); however, they have not yet been used in asynchronous research. Aussems and colleagues studied the actions’ distinctiveness and difficulty by having adults rate each action for similarity to other actions and for difficulty of describing the action (2018). The selected novel actions for this study were chosen for distinctiveness and equivalent difficulty. The average difficulty rating for actions on List A and B were 4.455 and 4.565 respectively. Similarity ratings for the eight novel actions used in this study are provided in Table 2 . List A contains the actions bowing, turning, crisscrossing, and scurrying and List B contains the actions hopping, dropping, dragging, and twisting. Table 2 Similarity ratings between all novel actions Bowing Turning Crisscrossing Scurrying Hopping Dropping Dragging Twisting Bowing 1.10 1.48 2.24 1.62 3.67 2.19 2.23 Turning 3.32 1.62 4.05 1.79 1.71 3.76 Crisscrossing 2.05 3.91 1.58 2.14 1.67 Scurrying 1.89 2.71 1.86 3.43 Hopping 1.91 2.00 2.10 Dropping 3.84 1.33 Dragging 2.43 Twisting Note : Adults rated each pair of actions on a scale from 1 (“very dissimilar”) to 7 (“very similar”). The novel actions in this study were chosen for their low similarity (i.e., ratings less than 4.0). Those with higher similarity ratings (e.g., turning and hopping) were intentionally put on separate lists. See Aussems et al. ( 2018 ) for more information. Video Stimuli Because people are a strong attractor of visual attention (Wilkinson & Light, 2011 ), videos of a female adult performing the target verbs from the GRACE database were imported into the AAC app GoVisual™. In the orthography absent condition, the adult performed the actions, and the child heard two sentences containing the target verb (e.g., “The girl is bupping. Look! The girl is bupping. ”). In the orthography present condition, the T2L feature was enabled in the GoVisual™ app so that the child saw the adult perform the actions, heard the target verb twice in a sentence frame, and saw the orthographic representation displayed dynamically for three seconds in uppercase letters (e.g., BUPPING ). Hardware and Software The GoVisual videos were screen recorded and edited for length using Adobe Premier. We placed edited videos in a repository on GitHub which was used as a base directory on the platform Lookit (Scott & Schulz, 2017 ). The Lookit platform uses JSON to program experiments and advertises to many potential participants. The Lookit platform allows for webcam recording of the experiment for reliability and data gathering purposes. There are approximately 2,000 three-year olds in their recruitment database. Experimental Design We used a counterbalanced, 2 x 2 mixed-design to increase the power of the study compared to a between-subjects design (Hegde & Salvatore, 2019 ). Because learning may generalize when first exposed to the orthography present condition, we considered order as the between-subjects element of the design (first exposed to orthography absent or first exposed to orthography present). The within-subjects element of the design was symbol representation (orthography present or absent). For this element, we measured response accuracy in either a verb identification task or a sight word recognition task in each symbol representation condition (orthography present or absent). Random assignment was used so that half the participants received the orthography absent condition first and half the participants received the orthography present condition first. Therefore, we had four possible combinations of conditions and orders (List A orthography present/List B orthography absent; List A orthography absent/List B orthography present; List B orthography present/List A orthography absent; List B orthography absent/List A orthography present). We randomly assigned participants to lists and conditions to allow us to determine if there were generalization effects across conditions. Measures Dependent Measures For Cohort A, we measured accurate identification of the target verb as the primary dependent measure. If the child did not respond within the allotted 10 seconds, the trial was recorded as incorrect. The score was 1 for correct responses and 0 for incorrect or non-responses. A second analysis was performed whereby trials with no response were excluded, as it is difficult to ascertain what a child does not know versus what a child does not attend to on a given trial (Rapin et al., 2009 ). Percent correct was calculated by dividing the number correct by 4 (the number of verb trials in each condition) and multiplying by 100. In the second analysis, the number correct was divided by the number of trials with responses and this varied on an individual basis. For Cohort B, the primary dependent measure was the difference in scores from pre-test to post-test for each condition (ranging from − 4 to 4). For moderator analyses, we determined the number of consonants identified correctly in the letter identification task and converted the parent questionnaire into an ordinal scale (1 for Yes-responses, 0 for No-responses). Interobserver Reliability We recorded videos from the participants’ webcams for interobserver reliability. Twenty participants’ videos (25%; 12 from Cohort A and 8 from Cohort B) were viewed by a trained research assistant to determine interobserver agreement (IOA) for the dependent measures. The number of agreements was divided by the number of agreements plus disagreements and multiplied by 100 to determine the percent IOA. For the verb identification task for Cohort A, the percent IOA was calculated to be 90.3% with a Cohen’s Kappa of 0.84, an “almost perfect” agreement (Landis & Koch, 1977 ). For the sight word identification task for Cohort B, the percent IOA was calculated to be 93.3% with a Cohen’s Kappa of 0.88, again an “almost perfect” agreement (Landis & Koch, 1977 ). Procedures Overview The entire experiment took approximately 20 minutes, including the parent questionnaire. First, the parent recorded video consent to participate in the experiment. Then, the parent received instructions about setting up their webcam and how to seat their child. The parent then completed background questions regarding the child’s development and literacy skills and experiences (See Appendix A). Parents received a brief overview and instructions about how to avoid prompting their child to provide correct responses. Then, cohorts A and B followed the procedure as outlined in Fig. 1. Reading Skills The participants completed a letter identification task to determine if the child could identify the consonants used in this experiment (i.e., B, P, F, D, G, S, H, N) in a field of two (see details below). Additionally, parents completed a questionnaire with questions about the availability of books in the home, the child’s interest in books, and literacy skills. This questionnaire was adapted and modified from Boudreau ( 2005 ) to only include questions relevant to this project. See Appendix A for a full list of questions. Pointing Familiarization Phase The child viewed a video of an adult using child-directed speech and talking about pointing. The child heard, “We’re going to play a pointing game. Are you ready? See this? This is my pointer finger. I can use it to point to things. You try! Let’s point together. Ready? Like this! Let’s play more pointing games!” The child then saw a cat alone on the left side of the screen. The child heard, “Where’s the cat! (pause) Where’s the cat?” Then the child saw a ball on the right side of the screen. The child again received instructions to point to the ball. This served as preparation for all future experimental tasks and confirmed whether the webcam was mirrored. Sight Word Recognition Pre-Test To measure the literacy skills of the participant, children in Cohort B completed a sight word recognition pre-test for the target words. Each target word appeared in a field of two, with a foil from the same list yoked to the target. Each target nonword was tested once for a total of 8 trials. No feedback on performance was given. Correct responses were scored a 1 and incorrect responses were scored a 0. Because children pointed to responses, parents clicked on the word to which their child pointed to confirm pointing responses. The child was directed to “Point to bupping,” for example, and was required to respond within 10 seconds. Exposure Phase The child was told, “We are going to learn some new words. Listen carefully so you can show me what you learned later!” The child viewed a video of the target action alone on the screen. We labeled the target action using the sentence frame, “The girl is verbing . Look! The girl is verbing. ” Thus, for each target verb, the child heard the label twice. For verbs in the orthography present condition, the orthographic representation for the verb (e.g., BUPPING) appeared on the screen for three seconds. See Fig. 2 for screenshots of the exposure phase in each condition. We presented each of the four verbs from one list and then, for Cohort A participants, we proceeded to the testing phase for that list. We randomized the order of verb presentation once, and the same order was given to all participants. Testing Phase Immediately after the exposure phase, children in Cohort A were assessed via a verb identification task. We presented two videos on the left and right sides of the screen and played for approximately 3 seconds (see Fig. 3 ). The videos then paused at an informative moment and the child heard, “Look! Point to verbing!” The child had 10 seconds to respond. No orthographic representations were present for any of the test phase trials and no feedback was given. Verbs were yoked to one another so that they were always presented together as each other’s foils. The order of test trials was randomized once, with the caveat that the last exposure trial would not be tested first. The order was presented to all participants. We asked parents to confirm their child’s pointing choices for reliability and so that issues with interpreting the webcam responses did not result in a loss of data. Correct responses were scored a 1 and incorrect responses and nonresponses were scored a 0. We coded nonresponses so that proportion correct could be calculated separately for trials with responses. Sight-Word Recognition Post-Test The sight-word recognition post-test was identical to the sight-word recognition pre-test. We only administered this to Cohort B participants. Letter Identification Task As a measure of early reading ability, the child was asked to identify each of the consonants used in the experiment. The child heard, “This is our last pointing game! Can you find the letter? Make sure to point!” The child saw two uppercase letters on each side of the screen and then heard, “Point to B,” for example. Each consonant was tested once for a total of eight trials. No corrective feedback was given. We asked parents to confirm their child’s pointing responses as a reliability and data-loss prevention measure. Analysis Plan Due to the binary nature of the data collected (correct or incorrect), we used multilevel logistic models (binomial family to capture both individual variation in performance and to eliminate the need to transform the data. Multi-level models (MLMs), as opposed to repeated measures analysis of variance (RMANOVA), do not require an individual’s data points to be reduced to an average. This allows the researcher to capture more data on individual variability and account for inherent dependencies within a model (Harel & McAllister, 2019 ). Additionally, MLMs do not require transformation of dichotomous outcome variables as do RMANOVA. For research question #1, we used a multilevel logistic model to determine if there were significant differences in identification accuracy between the orthography present and absent conditions. Additionally, we incorporated the order of conditions into the model (orthography absent first or orthography present first) to see if there was generalization from one condition to the other. We included participant as a random factor and orthography and order as fixed factors. First, we created an empty model using the generalized linear model effect (glmer() function) in R (v. 2022.12.0) (R Development Core Team, 2011 ). To determine if participants scored above chance, we assessed whether the intercept significantly differed from 0.5 (chance performance on the two-choice array) using the z- test and p- value output in an empty model ( glmer(correct ~ (1|ID)) (Arunachalam et al., 2016 ). The empty model uses random intercepts from each participant to account for individual variability in performance. Second, to determine if participants benefitted from orthographic support during the identification tasks, we entered the orthographic condition (present or absent) into the model as a fixed effect ( glmer(correct ~ (1|ID) + orthography condition) ). The orthographic condition was dummy coded as -0.5 for the orthography absent condition and 0.5 for the orthography present condition so as not to make assumptions about the benefit of orthography and so that the combination of the two variables sums to zero. Additionally, we entered task order into the model as a fixed effect ( glmer(correct ~ (1|ID) + orthography condition + order) ) to determine if there was generalization between conditions. Exploratory analyses included the interaction of chronological age, letter identification skills, and parent-reported literacy interest on the accuracy of identifying the target verbs in the orthography present condition. To analyze the results of the sight word recognition test, we used a paired sample t-test to compare the difference between pre-test and post-test scores in each condition. Because participants could have three possible outcome scores (same, worse, or better), multilevel models were not appropriate for this analysis. Only outcome variables with two possibilities (i.e., binomial family) or continuous variables (i.e., gaussian) are appropriate for multilevel modeling. Expected Results Based on previous research, we expected participants to demonstrate higher accuracy in identifying verbs in the orthography present condition compared to the orthography absent condition (Clark & Reuterskiöld, 2023 ; O’Leary & Ehri, 2020 ; Lucas & Norbury, 2014 ; Baron et al., 2018 ). We expected that order would not impact learning as we used different actions and words in the two different conditions. We also expected that chronological age, letter identification skills, and literacy experience would moderate whether participants would benefit from orthography present for both the verb identification task and the sight-word recognition post-test. Results RQ1: Does an orthography present condition result in higher accuracy in a verb identification task compared to an orthography absent condition in TD three-year old children? On average, participants accurately identified the correct action 44% (SD = .50) of the time across both orthography present and orthography absent conditions. By running an empty model ( correct ~ (1|ID) ), we first determined that participants did not perform significantly better than chance, as the intercept was not significant (intercept estimate p = .107). In the orthography present condition, the average proportion correct was 46% (SD = .49) while in the orthography absent condition, the average proportion correct was 43% (SD = .50). See Fig. 4 for a box plot of participant performance in each condition. We built a second model to determine if the presence of orthography during the exposure phase significantly improved the accuracy in the test phase. Participants did not perform significantly different for verbs learned in the orthography present and orthography absent conditions ( p = .475). Participants were only required to respond to four trials in each condition; we were therefore unable to calculate results above chance on an individual basis as the probability of getting four of four correct on a two-forced choice task does not meet criteria to reject the null hypothesis ( p = 0.0625) based on binomial probability. Thus, even if the participant was 100% accurate on all identification trials in a condition, we could still not determine if that individual performed significantly above chance. When all trials were taken into consideration, a child would have to accurately respond to 7 out of 8 trials to perform significantly above chance (binomial p = .035). Only three participants in Cohort A performed significantly above chance using these criteria. To determine if participants performed better in the orthography present condition during verb learning when trials with no response were removed, we built a third model. The empty model again revealed that participants did not perform above chance ( p = 0.142). A fourth model, with the orthography condition as a fixed effect was not significant ( p = 0.727). Because the order of conditions may have impacted accuracy across conditions, we entered order into a fifth model as a fixed effect. Order was not significant ( p = 0.205). To ensure order did not interact with orthography condition, we built a sixth model with an interaction term (orthography condition * order). There were no significant fixed or interaction effects. RQ2: Does a child’s relative benefit from the presence of a written word vary according to age, letter identification abilities and/or parent-reported literacy interest? Because participants did not perform significantly better for words taught in the presence of orthography, we analyzed age, letter identification abilities, and parent-reported literacy interest as fixed effects. We entered mean-centered age into a multi-level logistic model ( glmer(correct ~ ageC + (1|ID)). As the model was nearly unidentifiable, age was rescaled and found to not significantly contribute to accuracy in the verb identification task ( p = 0.1569). We next entered letter identification ability into a model ( glmer(correct ~ letterID + (1|ID)) . Letter identification abilities were not a significant contributor to accuracy in the verb identification task ( p = 0.361). Because of the ordinal nature of the parent-reported literacy interest, we formed two groups by median-splitting the participants into high and low literacy interest groups. The mean literacy interest score of Cohort A was 21.68; therefore, we placed participants with a lower score into the low literacy interest group, and participants with a 21.68 or higher scores into the high literacy interest group. We built a model with reading interest entered as a fixed effect ( glmer(correct ~ ReadingInterest + (1|ID)) . Reading interest was not a significant predictor of accuracy ( p = 0.239). To determine if any of the potential moderator variables interacted with the orthography condition, several multilevel models with interaction terms were built. No independent variables significantly interacted with orthography to impact accuracy. Those with higher reading interest were, on average, more accurate in both orthography absent and orthography present conditions. Those with lower reading interest, were more accurate, on average, in the orthography present condition compared to the orthography absent condition. See Fig. 5 for a visual representation of this exploratory relationship. We also explored the relationship between letter identification ability and orthography (see Fig. 6). Those with better letter identification abilities were more accurate in identifying verbs, regardless of orthography condition. The mean accuracy across each independent variable in the orthography absent and orthography present condition is presented in Table 3 . Table 3 Average proportion correct for median-split groups across conditions for the verb identification task. Median-Split Dependent Variable Orthography Present Orthography Absent Higher Reading Interest 0.45 (0.50) 0.46 (0.50) Lower Reading Interest 0.47 (0.50) 0.41 (0.49) Higher Letter Identification 0.47 (0.50) 0.43 (0.50) Lower Letter Identification 0.42 (0.50) 0.42 (0.50) Older Age 0.46 (0.50) 0.45 (0.50) Younger Age 0.45 (0.50) 0.41 (0.49) Note : Standard deviations are shown in parentheses. RQ3: Do TD three-year old children improve in sight word recognition from pre-test to post-test when verbs are shown in an orthography present condition compared to an orthography absent condition? Because previous research has demonstrated that sight word recognition improves with the provision of T2L technology, we performed a one-tailed paired samples t-test. We compared the difference in scores on the sight word recognition task in each condition (orthography present and orthography absent). To test for normality, a Shapiro-Wilk normality test was performed with a nonsignificant result ( p = .20). There was a significant difference in sight word recognition for verbs presented in the orthography present condition compared to in the orthography absent condition ( t = 1.79, p = 0.04). On average, participants’ scores from pre-test to post-test improved by 0.5 more points in the orthography present condition compared to the orthography absent condition. See Fig. 7 for a visual representation of sight word recognition across conditions. Discussion Does Orthography Support Verb Learning? We investigated whether TD three-year old children would benefit from the presence of orthography during a novel verb learning task. Participants heard eight verbs two times each in a sentence frame, and for half of the verbs, the participants also saw the orthographic representation for three seconds. Participants were then tested for their recall of the verbs in a single condition in a two-alternative forced choice task. They did not perform significantly differently on the posttest for verbs taught in the orthography present and orthography absent condition during the verb identification task. It is possible that orthographic representations do not support verb learning but there are other potential explanations. For example, the task may have been too difficult. Participants, on average, did not perform above chance in either condition, suggesting that this task was too difficult for them. Only three participants met binomial probability criteria for ‘passing’ across all eight post-test trials (6% of participants). The poor performance of participants may be due to several factors. Although we used content nouns, not pronouns, in the exposure phase of the experiment, we paused the ongoing action and then labeled the action with an -ing aspect marker, indicating an ongoing activity which may be confusing (Ambalu et al., 1997 ; Horvath & Arunachalam, 2019 ). We also did not have the participant actively engage in the novel actions. Researchers have found that children remembered the novel actions better if they had performed the action prior to exposure (Aussems & Kita, 2021 ). Participants were only exposed to each novel verb twice. Although prior research has used two exposures, these studies have used immediate recall (e.g., Syrett et al., 2014 ; Arunachalam & Waxman, 2015 ). Prior studies have provided a familiarization phase with two or fewer exposures of a target verb and then immediately tested for identification (e.g., Arunachalam & Waxman, 2015 ; He et al., 2020 ; Horvath & Arunachalam, 2021 ). We provided two exposures of a target verb sequentially across four verbs and then, after four verbs, tested each verb in a post-test. Because of the time between exposure and post-test, three-year old children may have forgotten the verb labels (Riches et al., 2005 ). We also taught eight verbs to the participants whereas prior research has more frequently taught six or fewer verbs (e.g., Arunachalam & Waxman, 2015 ; Brackenbury & Fey, 2003 ). Another potential issue is that participants only saw the orthographic representations for three seconds using the T2L© technology. Thus, the representations were not non-transient (Ricketts et al., 2009 ) as has been the case in previous studies of orthographic facilitation (e.g., Alt et al, 2019 ; Baron et al., 2018 ; Lucas & Norbury, 2014 ; Ricketts et al., 2015 ). Participants may need to view the orthographic representations longer to derive benefit in identification tasks at an early age. Anecdotally, many children commented during the experiment that they wanted to go outside or asked if the ‘game was over yet.’ This could be an indication of boredom. The experiment took between 10 and 15 minutes. For an online, asynchronous study, this may be too long for the average three-year-old. Other online, asynchronous studies have used 10-minute tasks with success (e.g., Lapidow et al., 2021 ; Scott et al., 2017 ). Although we notified parents that they could pause the experiment at any time, parents rarely used this option. Lapidow and colleagues found that participants needed untimed tasks in a Lookit-based experiment with three-year-old children (2021). Participants more often gave a response when a manual button press was required to proceed to the next trial compared to a 20-second automated time limit. As participants in this experiment were limited to 10 seconds to complete each trial, this could have impacted the number of trials without a response. Other studies with preschool-aged children have used very short words to demonstrate an orthographic facilitation effect (e.g., O’Leary & Ehri, 2020 ). O’Leary and Ehri used two-letter CV words with preschool-aged children and demonstrated a benefit in proper name recall when the orthographic representations had been present during learning. In this experiment, we used four-letter words + ing endings. For preliterate children, this may have been too complex; however, because a benefit for sight word recognition was exhibited, children processed the orthographic representation to some extent. Perhaps participants did not demonstrate an orthographic facilitation effect because of their level of literacy development. Older children with more literacy skills may demonstrate an orthographic facilitation effect for verb identification. O’Leary and Ehri ( 2020 ) found that preschool-aged children benefitted from spellings when learning proper nouns, but those children named several letters and some read simple words. Our participants identified, on average, 6.78 out of the 8 letters tested. A letter naming task, or a letter-sound task, may have resulted in more significant exploratory moderator findings. There may be a developmental point at which orthographic representations become supportive of verb learning, particularly for 7-letter words with imperfect letter-sound correspondence. As we saw a significant interaction between reading interest and orthographic representation, with those with higher reading interest performing more poorly in verb identification in the orthography present condition, children may be focusing too much effort on attempting to decode the spelling at this young age. For those interested in reading and letters, the letters may serve as a distraction rather than an aid to learning. Out of the fifty participants, 15 of them demonstrated an orthographic facilitation effect, performing better on the verb identification post-test for verbs taught in the orthography present condition. On average, these participants were 23% accurate on orthography absent trials and 60% accurate on orthography present trials. When trials without a response were removed, 18 demonstrated an orthographic facilitation effect with 26% accuracy on orthography absent trials and 56% accuracy on orthography present trials. Those who responded positively to orthographic representations had only slight differences in reading interest, letter identification, and age, indicating that other moderators are driving an orthographic facilitation effect. Potential moderators could be overall expressive vocabulary skills, as prior studies have demonstrated the power of expressive vocabulary to drive further vocabulary growth (e.g., Joseph et al., 2019 ; Clark & Reuterskiöld, 2023 ). Other studies have also found a link between receptive vocabulary skills and the orthographic facilitation effect (e.g., Salins et al., 2023 ). Those with higher expressive and/or receptive vocabulary skills may be adept at learning new words in a reading context. Skilled readers learn more words compared to lesser skilled readers because they efficiently bind orthographic representations, phonological representations, and word meaning (Ehri & Rosenthal, 2007 ). Verb Learning and the Lexical Quality Hypothesis The data from this study suggests that, for the verb identification task, orthographic representations do not support verb learning in TD three-year old children. Is there a difference with verbs when children are creating semantic, phonological, and orthographic links when compared to nouns (Perfetti & Hart, 2002 )? We think not. Although the participants could, on average, identify the letters used in the experimental stimuli, it is possible that more literacy skills are required to benefit from orthographic representations during verb learning, particularly for longer words. Participants in the O’Leary and Ehri study (2020) could name most of the letters of the alphabet if presented in a random order and use this information to learn CV proper names more quickly (e.g., LU). Perhaps letter naming or letter-sound correspondence skills are a developmental requirement of the orthographic facilitation effect (Chambrè et al., 2020 ; O’Leary & Ehri, 2020 ). Future research should explore whether those with more literacy skills, would demonstrate a benefit for learning verbs with the support of orthographic representations. Orthographic facilitation may work as an inverted U-shaped curve; orthographic representations may not be helpful for beginning or advanced readers (who generate their own mental graphemic representations), but for those who have established letter-sound correspondence skills (i.e., those in first and second grade), orthographic representations may be beneficial. Svaldi and colleagues ( 2024 ) did not see a benefit for children aged 8 through 12 for orthographic representations during verb learning. These participants may have fallen into the category of already self-producing mental graphemic representations; thus, providing orthographic representations did not improve verb learning. We know there are strong links between orthographic representations and phonological representations (Ehri & Rosenthal, 2007 ); as such, all published experiments on orthographic facilitation have demonstrated a positive effect for naming post-tests (e.g., Chambrè et al., 2017 ; Chambrè et al., 2020 ; Lucas & Norbury, 2014 ; O’Leary & Ehri, 2020 ; Salins et al., 2023 ). What is less clear are the links between orthographic representations and meaning and phonological representations and meaning (see Fig. 8 ). Many studies have failed to demonstrate a benefit for orthographic representations in spoken word to picture matching post-tests (e.g., Chambrè et al., 2017 ; O’Leary & Ehri, 2020 ; Ricketts et al., 2015 ; for a review, see Colenbrander et al., 2019 ), often attributing the lack of a benefit to ceiling effects. As our participants struggled with the verb identification task and did not perform above chance, ceiling effects were not a factor. Perhaps children did not have enough exposure to the verbs, nor enough time to view the orthographic representations to create stronger links. Because this task was inadvertently too difficult for the participants, further research is needed to determine if verbs behave differently from nouns. With participant and task manipulations such as a wider age range, a decrease in the amount of time between exposure and testing, and a reduction in task duration, we will investigate if the lexical quality hypothesis holds true for verbs as well as nouns. [Insert Fig. 8 ] Sight Word Acquisition Benefits Results from Cohort B indicate that children attended to the orthographic representations during the exposure phase. Participants improved from pre-test to post-test, but only for those words for which the orthographic representations were shown. Whereas participants performed worse, on average, on the post-test for verbs in the orthography absent condition, participants performed better, on average, for verbs in the orthography present condition. We did not find significant pairwise correlations between participants’ difference scores from pre-test to post-test in the orthography present condition and their reading interest, letter identification skills, or age. Reading Measures Parents reported how engaged and interested their children were in reading activities. We also directly tested children’s ability to identify letters in a two-alternative forced choice task. These measures were correlated with one-another (Spearman’s correlation; Cohort A, ρ = 0.44, p = 0.002; Cohort B ρ = 0.62, p < 0.001) indicating that these measures are likely addressing the same concepts. It is likely that the reading interest survey that caregivers completed is a valid measure of reading interest and engagement as it was moderately correlated with the letter identification task. Limitations Limitations of this study include: 1) we were unable to conduct a binomial probability analysis, 2) this is a fully automated experiment without any experimenter input or guidance, 3) we had high attrition rates which may have impacted results, and 4) the task may have been too difficult for this age group. The number of test trials limited the analyses we could perform. Because of fears of boredom, we only tested each verb once, resulting in 4 trials for each condition. This did not allow us to perform binomial probability calculations to test which participants ‘passed’ and who ‘failed.’ Future studies should include at least six trials per condition so that pass/fail criteria can be set. This may require that a between-subjects design is employed to prevent boredom with the experimental tasks. Because experimenters were not present for the tasks, children may have forgotten to point at the screen or may have lost interest quickly. Although we looked to eliminate trials if parents provided too much prompting, it was sometimes difficult to tell what parents may have done off camera to impact their child’s responses. Some parents were blatant in their prompting, particularly in the sight word recognition task (e.g., asking their child to sound out the word or saying the first sound in the word). Caregivers also struggled to keep some participants on task. Online studies lack the tight experimental control of in-person research and thus, there may be some variability in the reliability of collected data. However, the Lookit platform has been validated in several unmoderated studies (e.g., Lapidow et al., 2021 ; Nelson & Oakes, 2021 ; Scott et al., 2017 ; Rocha & Addyman, 2022 ) and since the COVID-19 pandemic many studies have investigated behavior using webcams (e.g., Elliot et al., 2022; Szente, 2020 ). Thus, it is feasible and appropriate to collect this data in an unmoderated fashion with this age group. Future studies might include more participants to account for parental/caregiver over- or under-involvement in experimental tasks and allow greater response time to ensure participants have adequate time to respond to a computer prompt (Lapidow et al., 2021 ). Attrition was an additional obstacle in this experiment. We had several participants (N = 13 for Cohort A; N = 5 for Cohort B) who did not finish the study, potentially because of boredom. Our attrition rate, combining participants who did not complete the task and those who did not meet inclusion criteria, was 31%. When researchers perform studies in-person, they frequently see 14% attrition (Scott & Schulz, 2017 ). Other online, asynchronous studies have also seen higher rates of attrition ranging from 32–41% (Lapidow et al., 2021 ; Scott et al., 2017 ). Future studies should account for 30% attrition rates for online, asynchronous studies due to boredom, technological issues, parental prompting, and participants not meeting inclusion criteria. Participants did not perform above chance on the verb identification task. This indicates that the task was exceedingly difficult. Because of fears of participants performing at ceiling levels due to the receptive nature of the task, we inadvertently made the task too difficult. Future studies should a) test each verb immediately after exposure, b) study orthographic facilitation across ages 3 through 7, and c) use a between-subjects design. Although we did not see a significant improvement in verb identification accuracy in the orthography present condition, participants did improve in their sight word recognition after exposure to the orthographic representations. Although orthographic representations may not help children learn the meaning of novel verbs at age 3, it does aid in their sight word recognition of these words. Because of this finding, we think it is imperative to provide orthographic representations on AAC systems as literacy skills are crucial for those with complex communication needs. Conclusion This study added to the literature by providing evidence that orthographic representations may not support verb learning for young children at the earliest stages of literacy development; it is uknown what literacy skill are necessary to promote verb learning. Further investigation is needed to determine if manipulations to the experimental task will increase participants’ performance overall and result in performance above chance. This study has provided foundational knowledge necessary to expand this research to minimally speaking school-age autistic children. We now know to a) widen the age range to determine the developmental trajectory of the orthographic facilitation effect and b) test for extension of the target verb directly after exposure. We will also measure letter-sound correspondence, as this may be a key skill to unlocking the benefits of orthographic representations. It is imperative that we know if orthographic representations support word learning across both nouns and verbs for minimally speaking school-age autistic children. The goal is to expand the expressive communication skills of AAC users and encourage service providers to emphasize literacy skills for this population. Declarations Acknowledgements We wish to express our appreciation to the children and families that participated in this research. We want to thank the Children Helping Science for their help with recruitment. We also thank [Colleague1] and [Colleague2] for their support with design and statistical analysis. Thank you to [Graduate Assistant] for your help with reliability. Data Availability Statement: Deidentified data are available upon request from the first author. 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Journal of speech, language, and hearing research , 54 (6), 1644–1657. https://doi.org/10.1044/1092-4388(2011/10-0098 ) Worah S, McNaughton D, Light J, Benedek-Wood E (2015) A comparison of two approaches for representing AAC vocabulary for young children. Int J Speech Lang Pathol 17(5):460–469 Zhang J, Zhang H, Relyea JE, Wui MGL, Yan Y, Nam R, Kharabi-Yamato L (2023) Orthographic facilitation in upper elementary students: does attention to morphology of complex words enhance the effects? Ann Dyslexia 73(1):148–163 Additional Declarations The authors declare no competing interests. Supplementary Files APPENDIXA.docx Cite Share Download PDF Status: Posted Version 1 posted You are reading this latest preprint version Research Square lets you share your work early, gain feedback from the community, and start making changes to your manuscript prior to peer review in a journal. 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Also discoverable on Platform About Our Team In Review Editorial Policies Advisory Board Help Center Resources Author Services Accessibility API Access RSS feed Manage Cookie Preferences © Research Square 2026 | ISSN 2693-5015 (online) Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information {"props":{"pageProps":{"initialData":{"identity":"rs-7473723","acceptedTermsAndConditions":true,"allowDirectSubmit":true,"archivedVersions":[],"articleType":"Research Article","associatedPublications":[],"authors":[{"id":506497930,"identity":"760dfda6-a094-45af-845d-b9853c2a005d","order_by":0,"name":"Grace Clark","email":"data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAZAAAAAyAQMAAABI0h/eAAAABlBMVEX///8AAABVwtN+AAAACXBIWXMAAA7EAAAOxAGVKw4bAAAA5UlEQVRIiWNgGAWjYDACdgYGxgYGGwjnAYMEiDLAr4UZrCUNwkogQcthmBYGwlr4m5mffZzx63w0v3T/wQ8JNRb5DOzN2yTwaZE4zGY8c2Pf7dyZcw4zSyQck7Bs4DlWhleLATODMePDntu5G24kszEksEkYMEjkmBHQwv4ZqOUcVMs/oBb5N4S08BgzbvhxAKIlsQ1kCw9+LRKHeYoZZzYk586ckWwskdgnYcDGk1ZsgU8Lf3v7ZsaeP3a5/RKJDz98+FZnwM9+eOMNfFrAgLENicNGUDkY/CFO2SgYBaNgFIxQAABLY0RtkVqabgAAAABJRU5ErkJggg==","orcid":"","institution":"Montclair State University","correspondingAuthor":true,"prefix":"","firstName":"Grace","middleName":"","lastName":"Clark","suffix":""},{"id":506497931,"identity":"ca8a655b-8cfc-4cff-9a0c-621e277e8eac","order_by":1,"name":"Christina Reuterskiöld","email":"","orcid":"","institution":"","correspondingAuthor":false,"prefix":"","firstName":"Christina","middleName":"","lastName":"Reuterskiöld","suffix":""}],"badges":[],"createdAt":"2025-08-27 16:55:52","currentVersionCode":1,"declarations":{"humanSubjects":true,"vertebrateSubjects":false,"conflictsOfInterestStatement":false,"humanSubjectEthicalGuidelines":true,"humanSubjectConsent":true,"humanSubjectClinicalTrial":false,"humanSubjectCaseReport":false,"vertebrateSubjectEthicalGuidelines":false},"doi":"10.21203/rs.3.rs-7473723/v1","doiUrl":"https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-7473723/v1","draftVersion":[],"editorialEvents":[],"editorialNote":"","failedWorkflow":false,"files":[{"id":90437919,"identity":"09332001-af8b-479e-9420-d7ece0eba4c6","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2025-09-02 17:25:34","extension":"png","order_by":1,"title":"Figure 1","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"figure","size":31600,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eSchematic of experimental elements.\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","description":"","filename":"1.png","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-7473723/v1/2b8f51022b307d6ba13bc3fd.png"},{"id":90438240,"identity":"b5ac90ab-6f33-4a01-a9f2-05f2c0994786","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2025-09-02 17:33:34","extension":"png","order_by":2,"title":"Figure 2","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"figure","size":929200,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eSample screenshots of orthography absent (left) and orthography present (right) videos for the exposure phase\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","description":"","filename":"2.png","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-7473723/v1/a1609a1ea966fabc38bc8061.png"},{"id":90437920,"identity":"194d5b03-d186-4f87-8e19-3891ddf68c67","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2025-09-02 17:25:34","extension":"png","order_by":3,"title":"Figure 3","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"figure","size":2316790,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eExample of the verb identification task. Each video played for approximately 3 seconds and was then paused at an informative moment. The child was then asked to point to a given verb.\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","description":"","filename":"3.png","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-7473723/v1/ecbdb8a99b9d0e9e33227730.png"},{"id":90437923,"identity":"68708292-8832-4b98-babe-f0d93b193b15","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2025-09-02 17:25:34","extension":"png","order_by":4,"title":"Figure 4","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"figure","size":67715,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eBox plot of the proportion of actions identified correctly in each condition. Each blue dot represents an individual participant’s performance.\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","description":"","filename":"4.png","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-7473723/v1/68419342704f740cc9a038e1.png"},{"id":90437922,"identity":"62ae456a-7c7a-437a-8191-e7dc3f5ac7a2","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2025-09-02 17:25:34","extension":"png","order_by":5,"title":"Figure 5","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"figure","size":57285,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eGraphic representation of the multilevel model depicting the exploratory interaction of orthography condition and reading interest on verb identification accuracy. For each graph, the left side represents accuracy in the orthography absent condition while the right side represents accuracy in the orthography present condition.\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","description":"","filename":"5.png","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-7473723/v1/5301445b60cf8fbae21184e1.png"},{"id":90439182,"identity":"a4d41d6b-8788-404d-8f14-e848437822f9","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2025-09-02 17:49:34","extension":"png","order_by":6,"title":"Figure 6","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"figure","size":62328,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eGraphic representation of the exploratory multilevel model depicting the interaction between letter identification skills and orthography condition. For both graphs, the left side represents poorer letter identification skills and the right side represents better letter identification skills.\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","description":"","filename":"6.png","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-7473723/v1/369ce0b9ea244d8ba2ecea7e.png"},{"id":90437930,"identity":"f5223132-d036-4fc6-b258-a5196792fb5e","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2025-09-02 17:25:35","extension":"png","order_by":7,"title":"Figure 7","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"figure","size":62541,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eVisual representation of differences between pretest and posttest scores on the sight word recognition test in the orthography absent and orthography present conditions.\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","description":"","filename":"7.png","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-7473723/v1/c0db212c19d8f5585feb242f.png"},{"id":90438963,"identity":"76b96177-11e4-44a9-906c-214c5a2b02e5","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2025-09-02 17:41:34","extension":"png","order_by":8,"title":"Figure 8","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"figure","size":8560,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eTheoretical model of the lexical quality hypothesis with links between orthographic representations, phonological representations, and semantics. Letter-sound correspondence is the ‘glue’ that binds phonology and orthographic representations (Adapted from Ehri \u0026amp; Rosenthal, 2007).\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","description":"","filename":"8.png","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-7473723/v1/a212b43a3bed48821a391d84.png"},{"id":90439760,"identity":"878d8d62-17ac-4993-99aa-c835cf436a77","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2025-09-02 17:57:38","extension":"pdf","order_by":0,"title":"","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"manuscript-pdf","size":5427004,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"","description":"","filename":"manuscript.pdf","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-7473723/v1/d176cb1d-ddf6-45d6-8d42-c08f6e76bc47.pdf"},{"id":90438239,"identity":"74095cdf-be18-415c-91de-851547ca4250","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2025-09-02 17:33:34","extension":"docx","order_by":9,"title":"","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"supplement","size":45804,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"","description":"","filename":"APPENDIXA.docx","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-7473723/v1/5cb7623f7785a125121fdd93.docx"}],"financialInterests":"The authors declare no competing interests.","formattedTitle":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eOrthographic Support for Verb Identification in Typically Developing Three-Year-Old Children\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","fulltext":[{"header":"Introduction","content":"\u003cp\u003eResearch has demonstrated that for nouns, presenting the written form alongside saying and showing the item, facilitates word learning for children (e.g., Chambr\u0026egrave; et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR16\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2017\u003c/span\u003e; O\u0026rsquo;Leary \u0026amp; Ehri, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR44\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2020\u003c/span\u003e; Salins et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR54\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2023\u003c/span\u003e; Zhang et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR65\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2023\u003c/span\u003e). This is referred to as the orthographic facilitation effect. These findings reinforce the interconnectedness of literacy and language skills and how spoken and written forms interact. At the center of literacy and language skills are spelling and word reading skills (Kamhi \u0026amp; Catts, 2012). Growth in language aids growth in reading skills and vice-versa, since reading and listening and writing and speaking are parallel processes that are heavily intertwined. The more a child reads, the more their vocabulary and other language skills grow, which then, in turn, benefits academic achievement.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eThe Orthographic Facilitation Effect\u003c/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhen researchers provide orthographic support during noun learning tasks, children perform better on post-tests for picture naming and identification tasks compared to an orthography absent condition. This is true despite the absence of any orthographic cues in these post-tests. Children as young as four years of age benefit from orthographic representations during noun learning tasks (O\u0026rsquo;Leary \u0026amp; Ehri, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR44\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2020\u003c/span\u003e). Preschool-age children learned proper names consisting of consonant-vowel (CV) combinations (e.g., LU) with and without orthographic representations present during the exposure phase. For words taught with orthographic representations present, participants were more accurate in naming the characters at post-test compared to character names taught without orthographic representation. Although these children were unable to decode words, they had sufficient alphabetic knowledge to use CV labels to aid memorization.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWe also see an orthographic facilitation effect in children from a variety of clinical populations, including autism spectrum disorder (ASD), Down syndrome, developmental language disorder (DLD), and dyslexia (e.g., Mengoni et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR42\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2013\u003c/span\u003e; Ricketts et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR52\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2015\u003c/span\u003e; Baron et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR11\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2018\u003c/span\u003e; for review, see Clark \u0026amp; Reuterski\u0026ouml;ld, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR19\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2021\u003c/span\u003e). This effect is also evident in minimally speaking autistic\u003csup\u003e1\u003c/sup\u003e children (Clark \u0026amp; Reuterski\u0026ouml;ld, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR20\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2023\u003c/span\u003e) in noun identification post-test tasks.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cdiv id=\"Sec3\" class=\"Section2\"\u003e\u003ch2\u003eTheoretical Considerations\u003c/h2\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe lexical quality hypothesis (Perfetti \u0026amp; Hart, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR47\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2002\u003c/span\u003e) states that when a word is known in multiple domains (e.g., phonological, orthographic, and semantic), it is easily activated, retrieved, and produced; on the other hand, when a word has poor representations or in fewer domains, it is more difficult to retrieve and produce. Thus, when teaching an unfamiliar word with orthographic support, the clinician or teacher is adding another layer of representational support and solidifying the child\u0026rsquo;s representations. High quality representations in one domain allow for easier activation in another domain (e.g., producing the spelling is easier when you are certain of the word\u0026rsquo;s phonology).\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eOrthographic representations are also a non-transient signal that children can process for a longer duration than the acoustic information in the speech signal (Ricketts et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR51\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2009\u003c/span\u003e). When\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003csup\u003e1\u003c/sup\u003eWe use identify-first language to describe autistic individuals rather than person-first language (e.g., person with autism) because of the wishes of autistic adults (e.g., Bottema-Beutel et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR13\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2021\u003c/span\u003e; Kenny et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR36\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2016\u003c/span\u003e).\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ethe text representation is presented alongside a picture of the novel object, children have time to process the orthographic information and to make connections with the phonological representation. When a novel word is only presented auditorily, a child must immediately process the phonological information; if the child is not attending or engaged, this information can be easily missed. The orthographic representation thus provides a non-transient signal to bind the phonological and orthographic information.\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eThe Importance of Verb Learning\u003c/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhile the orthographic facilitation effect is well-researched for noun learning, few studies have investigated novel verb learning. We know that verb learning is distinct from and more difficult than noun learning (e.g., Imai et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR33\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2008\u003c/span\u003e; Arunachalam \u0026amp; Waxman, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR4\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2011\u003c/span\u003e; \u003cspan citationid=\"CR5\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2015\u003c/span\u003e). Verbs, unlike nouns, describe a \u003cem\u003erelationship\u003c/em\u003e between an agent and an object. The object or agent can change, but the action remains the same. Verbs are a large part of children\u0026rsquo;s early vocabulary (Bloom et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR12\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e1993\u003c/span\u003e) and are essential to build sentences (Tomasello, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR61\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e1992\u003c/span\u003e). While noun learning has been emphasized in the orthographic facilitation research (e.g., Alt et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR1\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2019\u003c/span\u003e; Baron et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR11\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2018\u003c/span\u003e; Chambr\u0026egrave; et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR16\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2017\u003c/span\u003e; O\u0026rsquo;Leary \u0026amp; Ehri, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR44\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2020\u003c/span\u003e; Ricketts et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR52\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2015\u003c/span\u003e; Salins et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR54\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2023\u003c/span\u003e; Zhang et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR65\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2023\u003c/span\u003e), nouns only comprise approximately one-third of a child\u0026rsquo;s early vocabulary (Bloom et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR12\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e1993\u003c/span\u003e). With verbs, children can produce new pragmatic intentions such as directing action, requesting an action, and obtaining attention (Lahey, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR38\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e1988\u003c/span\u003e). Thus, verbs are important to study empirically.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn previous research on orthographic facilitation, four studies have included some non-noun stimuli: Chambr\u0026egrave; and colleagues (\u003cspan citationid=\"CR16\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2017\u003c/span\u003e) included one verb, Lucas and Norbury (\u003cspan citationid=\"CR41\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2014\u003c/span\u003e) included one adjective, Zhang and colleagues (\u003cspan citationid=\"CR65\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2023\u003c/span\u003e) included several adjectives and one verb, and Svaldi and colleagues (\u003cspan citationid=\"CR57\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2024\u003c/span\u003e) included 20 verbs. Because there are so few verbs used as stimuli in studies of orthographic facilitation, we do not know if verbs will demonstrate an orthographic facilitation effect as well. The one documented study of verbs found null results for providing orthographic representations (Svaldi et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR57\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2024\u003c/span\u003e); however, this study did not measure spelling or sight word recognition, so it is difficult to determine if the participants attended to the orthographic representations during animation scenes.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWe do not yet know if children can listen to a sentence containing a novel verb, see the orthographic representation, and parse the sentence to make connections between the phonology and orthography. Previous studies have demonstrated that typically developing (TD) children learn verbs best when the verb is placed in a sentence frame with a fully specified noun phrase (e.g., \u0026ldquo;The girl is \u003cem\u003egorping\u003c/em\u003e a cat.;\u0026rdquo; Arunachalam \u0026amp; Waxman, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR4\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2011\u003c/span\u003e, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR5\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2015\u003c/span\u003e). We do not know if we present the word \u0026ldquo;\u003cem\u003egorping\u0026rdquo;\u003c/em\u003e while the child hears a sentence frame if verb learning will increase.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eOur original goal was to investigate this with minimally speaking school-age autistic\u003csup\u003e1\u003c/sup\u003e children. As so little research on verb learning with orthographic support has been completed with TD populations, however, we first wanted to ask our questions with a TD population. We chose preschool-age children as our sample population because previous research has used this age group as a first step toward establishing the foundational knowledge necessary to expand interventions to children with complex communication needs (e.g., Drager et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR23\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2004\u003c/span\u003e; O\u0026rsquo;Neill et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR45\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2019\u003c/span\u003e; Thistle \u0026amp; Wilkinson, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR60\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2017\u003c/span\u003e; Wainwright et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR62\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2020\u003c/span\u003e; Worah et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR64\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2015\u003c/span\u003e). This allows us to explore orthographic facilitation with verbs without the confounding effects of motor, sensory, perceptual, and/or communication differences exhibited by some autistic individuals (Drager et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR22\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2003\u003c/span\u003e). We chose three-year-old children as they are still in the process of learning language in a way that may parallel the language development of minimally speaking autistic individuals (Gernsbacher et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR26\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2016\u003c/span\u003e).\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eTD three-year-old children understand approximately 1,000 to 3,000 words and produce approximately 800 to 1,000 words. They are beginning to speak about concepts beyond the here-and-now and starting to use a wider variety of increasingly complex semantic and syntactic combinations (Labrell et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR37\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2014\u003c/span\u003e). Additionally, there is some variability in letter identification skills and print knowledge at this age (Chaney, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR18\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e1992\u003c/span\u003e). O\u0026rsquo;Leary and Ehri (\u003cspan citationid=\"CR44\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2020\u003c/span\u003e) demonstrated an orthographic facilitation effect with 4- and 5-year-old children who could name most of the letters of the alphabet but read very few words (on average, approximately one word); thus, it is possible that 3-year-old children can also benefit from orthographic representations during word learning if they are able to name or identify some of the alphabet. Knowing how orthography impacts children in the early stages of language development will inform the adaptation of vocabulary intervention strategies for children with complex communication needs in future studies.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eOverview of the Present Study\u003c/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe overarching goal of this study was to determine if exposure to a video plus speech plus text condition (orthography present) improves verb learning compared to a video plus speech condition (orthography absent) for TD three-year old children. This was a first step toward determining whether preschoolers can parse out the orthographic representation from a sentence frame when learning novel verbs. We also determined if a child\u0026rsquo;s literacy skills and interests moderated any potential orthographic facilitation effects. Additionally, we determined if three-year old children can \u0026lsquo;fast-map\u0026rsquo; mental graphemic representations (Apel et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR3\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2006\u003c/span\u003e) by administering a sight word recognition pre- and post-test of the targeted words. We hypothesized that TD three-year olds would be more accurate in a verb identification task when those verbs had been taught in the presence of their orthographic representations. Additionally, we hypothesized that children would benefit more from the presence of orthographic representations when they have more letter interest and that, on average, children would create mental graphemic representations and be able to identify words taught in the orthography present condition in a sight word recognition post-test. Our research questions were:\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003col\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cp\u003eDoes an orthography present condition result in higher accuracy in a verb identification task compared to an orthography absent condition in TD three-year-old children?\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cp\u003eDoes a child\u0026rsquo;s relative benefit from the presence of a written word vary according to age, letter identification abilities, and/or parent-reported literacy interest?\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cp\u003eDo TD three-year old children improve in sight word recognition from pre-test to post-test when verbs are shown in an orthography present condition compared to an orthography absent condition?\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/ol\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eBecause it may be difficult for three-year-old children to sit for an experiment that investigates both verb learning and sight word acquisition, two cohorts were recruited. Cohort A answered questions 1 and 2; Cohort B answered question 3. More participants were assigned to Cohort A to provide more statistical power to answer research questions 1 and 2.\u003c/p\u003e"},{"header":"Method","content":"\u003cp\u003e This study was approved by the Institutional Review Board at [insert University name] (IRB- FY2023-7933). Participants provided parental permission and informed consent via video and had the option to pause or exit the study if their child indicated a withdrawal of consent.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eParticipants\u003c/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOne-hundred ten preschool-age TD children (ages 3;0 to 3;11; mean\u0026thinsp;=\u0026thinsp;3.53 years) were recruited from the United States and divided unevenly into two cohorts (Cohort A- 75 participants and Cohort B- 35 participants). Inclusion criteria were: 1) between ages 3;0 to 3;11, 2) no previous speech and language therapy, 3) hearing and vision within normal limits or corrected to be so, 4) no intellectual or cognitive impairments, and 5) English as their primary language. We expected approximately 15% attrition from the recruited sample. 72 participants consented to participate in Cohort A; however, 13 did not complete all tasks, 8 were receiving speech-language therapy services, 8 had a dominant language other than English, 2 failed to respond in the pointing familiarization phase, and 4 had technical difficulties. As some children fit multiple exclusionary criteria, the final participant count for Cohort A was 50 participants. 38 participants consented to participate in Cohort B; we lost 5 participants due to incomplete responses, 3 participants due to a history of speech-language services, and 1 due to a dominant language other than English. The final count was 32 participants. See Table\u0026nbsp;\u003cspan refid=\"Tab1\" class=\"InternalRef\"\u003e1\u003c/span\u003e for a summary of participant characteristics.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cdiv class=\"gridtable\"\u003e\u003ctable float=\"Yes\" id=\"Tab1\" border=\"1\"\u003e\u003ccaption language=\"En\"\u003e\u003cdiv class=\"CaptionNumber\"\u003eTable 1\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv class=\"CaptionContent\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eDemographics and Participant Characteristics\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003c/caption\u003e\u003ccolgroup cols=\"3\"\u003e\u003cdiv align=\"left\" class=\"colspec\" colname=\"c1\" colnum=\"1\"\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv align=\"left\" class=\"colspec\" colname=\"c2\" colnum=\"2\"\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv align=\"left\" class=\"colspec\" colname=\"c3\" colnum=\"3\"\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cthead\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003cth align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eParticipant Characteristics\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/th\u003e\u003cth align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eCohort A Mean (SD) (N\u0026thinsp;=\u0026thinsp;50)\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/th\u003e\u003cth align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eCohort B Mean (SD) (N\u0026thinsp;=\u0026thinsp;32)\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/th\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003c/thead\u003e\u003ctbody\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eChronological Age (Years)\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e3.52 (.30)\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e3.54 (.27)\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eGender\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e27 Male\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e23 Female\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e15 Male\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e17 Female\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eLetter Identification Skills*\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e6.92 (1.54)\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e6.56 (2.09)\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eParent-Reporting Reading Interest\u003csup\u003e+\u003c/sup\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e21.68 (3.1)\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e21.94 (2.82)\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eRace/Ethnicity\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e43 White\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e8 Black or African American\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e7 Asian\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e4 Hispanic, Latino, or Spanish origin\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e1 American Indian\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e13 Mixed Race/Ethnicity\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e25 White\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e6 Black or African American\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e6 Asian\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e4 Hispanic, Latino, or Spanish origin\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e1 American Indian\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e3 Another Race\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e13 Mixed Race/ Ethnicity\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eLocation\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e15 North\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e13 Midwest\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e11 South\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e9 West\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e12 North\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e6 Midwest\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e4 South\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e9 West\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eParent Education Level\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e3 Less than college\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e19 Bachelor\u0026rsquo;s level\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e28 Professional degree or higher\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e1 Less than college\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e9 Bachelor\u0026rsquo;s level\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e21 Professional degree or higher\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003c/tbody\u003e\u003c/colgroup\u003e\u003ctfoot\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd colspan=\"3\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eNote\u003c/em\u003e: Abbreviations: SD\u0026thinsp;=\u0026thinsp;standard deviation; not all participants reported demographic information\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003c/tfoot\u003e\u003c/table\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e*Scores are based on a letter identification two-alternative forced choice task with a minimum score of 0 and a maximum score of 8.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003csup\u003e+\u003c/sup\u003e See Appendix A for the complete parent report questionnaire. The maximum score a child could receive was 27. \u0026lsquo;Yes\u0026rsquo; responses were scored as 1 and \u0026lsquo;No\u0026rsquo; responses were scored as 0. The questionnaire was based on Boudreau (\u003cspan citationid=\"CR14\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2005\u003c/span\u003e).\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eMaterials\u003c/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWord Lists\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e Participants learned two lists, each containing four verbs, with each list taught in one of two conditions (orthography present or absent). Novel words and actions were used as prior exposure to verbs is difficult to control. Additionally, because properties of the lexical items matter, all words were intransitive novel verbs that have low neighborhood density. Based on this criteria, the following eight novel nonwords were selected: /bʌp/, /daʊf/, /gɛʃ/, /faʊp/ (List A) and /baɪʃ/, /dɔɪp/, /gaʊb/, /fɑf/ (List B; Gupta et al., 2014). The nonwords were balanced across lists for first consonant sound, presence of a digraph, number of phonemes, and number of syllables. Based on the spellings provided by twelve adult native English speakers from an auditory sample, spellings were \u003cem\u003ebupping, daufing, geshing, falping\u003c/em\u003e (List A) and \u003cem\u003ebishing, doiping, gaubing, and faffing\u003c/em\u003e (List B). Words were spelled using uppercase letters based on prior research from O\u0026rsquo;Leary and Ehri (\u003cspan citationid=\"CR44\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2020\u003c/span\u003e) in an orthographic facilitation experiment with preschool-aged children.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eEach nonword was randomly assigned to a novel action from the GestuRe and ACtion Exemplar (GRACE) video database (Aussems et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR7\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2018\u003c/span\u003e). This database\u0026rsquo;s videos have been used to study verb learning in two-to-four-year-old children across three studies (Aussems \u0026amp; Kita, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR8\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2019\u003c/span\u003e, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR9\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2021\u003c/span\u003e; Aussems et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR10\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2022\u003c/span\u003e); however, they have not yet been used in asynchronous research. Aussems and colleagues studied the actions\u0026rsquo; distinctiveness and difficulty by having adults rate each action for similarity to other actions and for difficulty of describing the action (2018). The selected novel actions for this study were chosen for distinctiveness and equivalent difficulty. The average difficulty rating for actions on List A and B were 4.455 and 4.565 respectively. Similarity ratings for the eight novel actions used in this study are provided in Table\u0026nbsp;\u003cspan refid=\"Tab2\" class=\"InternalRef\"\u003e2\u003c/span\u003e. List A contains the actions bowing, turning, crisscrossing, and scurrying and List B contains the actions hopping, dropping, dragging, and twisting.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cdiv class=\"gridtable\"\u003e\u003ctable float=\"Yes\" id=\"Tab2\" border=\"1\"\u003e\u003ccaption language=\"En\"\u003e\u003cdiv class=\"CaptionNumber\"\u003eTable 2\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv class=\"CaptionContent\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eSimilarity ratings between all novel actions\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003c/caption\u003e\u003ccolgroup cols=\"9\"\u003e\u003cdiv align=\"left\" class=\"colspec\" colname=\"c1\" colnum=\"1\"\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv align=\"left\" class=\"colspec\" colname=\"c2\" colnum=\"2\"\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv align=\"char\" char=\".\" class=\"colspec\" colname=\"c3\" colnum=\"3\"\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv align=\"char\" char=\".\" class=\"colspec\" colname=\"c4\" colnum=\"4\"\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv align=\"char\" char=\".\" class=\"colspec\" colname=\"c5\" colnum=\"5\"\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv align=\"char\" char=\".\" class=\"colspec\" colname=\"c6\" colnum=\"6\"\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv align=\"char\" char=\".\" class=\"colspec\" colname=\"c7\" colnum=\"7\"\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv align=\"char\" char=\".\" class=\"colspec\" colname=\"c8\" colnum=\"8\"\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv align=\"char\" char=\".\" class=\"colspec\" colname=\"c9\" colnum=\"9\"\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cthead\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003cth align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/th\u003e\u003cth align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eBowing\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/th\u003e\u003cth align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eTurning\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/th\u003e\u003cth align=\"left\" colname=\"c4\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eCrisscrossing\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/th\u003e\u003cth align=\"left\" colname=\"c5\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eScurrying\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/th\u003e\u003cth align=\"left\" colname=\"c6\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eHopping\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/th\u003e\u003cth align=\"left\" colname=\"c7\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eDropping\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/th\u003e\u003cth align=\"left\" colname=\"c8\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eDragging\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/th\u003e\u003cth align=\"left\" colname=\"c9\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eTwisting\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/th\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003c/thead\u003e\u003ctbody\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eBowing\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e1.10\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\" colname=\"c4\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e1.48\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\" colname=\"c5\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e2.24\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\" colname=\"c6\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e1.62\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\" colname=\"c7\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e3.67\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\" colname=\"c8\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e2.19\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\" colname=\"c9\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e2.23\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eTurning\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\" colname=\"c4\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e3.32\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\" colname=\"c5\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e1.62\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\" colname=\"c6\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e4.05\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\" colname=\"c7\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e1.79\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\" colname=\"c8\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e1.71\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\" colname=\"c9\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e3.76\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eCrisscrossing\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c4\"\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\" colname=\"c5\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e2.05\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\" colname=\"c6\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e3.91\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\" colname=\"c7\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e1.58\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\" colname=\"c8\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e2.14\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\" colname=\"c9\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e1.67\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eScurrying\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c4\"\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c5\"\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\" colname=\"c6\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e1.89\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\" colname=\"c7\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e2.71\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\" colname=\"c8\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e1.86\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\" colname=\"c9\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e3.43\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eHopping\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c4\"\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c5\"\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c6\"\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\" colname=\"c7\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e1.91\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\" colname=\"c8\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e2.00\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\" colname=\"c9\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e2.10\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eDropping\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c4\"\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c5\"\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c6\"\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c7\"\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\" colname=\"c8\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e3.84\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\" colname=\"c9\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e1.33\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eDragging\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c4\"\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c5\"\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c6\"\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c7\"\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c8\"\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\" colname=\"c9\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e2.43\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eTwisting\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c4\"\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c5\"\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c6\"\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c7\"\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c8\"\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c9\"\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003c/tbody\u003e\u003c/colgroup\u003e\u003ctfoot\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd colspan=\"9\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eNote\u003c/em\u003e: Adults rated each pair of actions on a scale from 1 (\u0026ldquo;very dissimilar\u0026rdquo;) to 7 (\u0026ldquo;very similar\u0026rdquo;). The novel actions in this study were chosen for their low similarity (i.e., ratings less than 4.0). Those with higher similarity ratings (e.g., turning and hopping) were intentionally put on separate lists. See Aussems et al. (\u003cspan citationid=\"CR7\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2018\u003c/span\u003e) for more information.\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003c/tfoot\u003e\u003c/table\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eVideo Stimuli\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eBecause people are a strong attractor of visual attention (Wilkinson \u0026amp; Light, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR63\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2011\u003c/span\u003e), videos of a female adult performing the target verbs from the GRACE database were imported into the AAC app GoVisual\u0026trade;. In the orthography absent condition, the adult performed the actions, and the child heard two sentences containing the target verb (e.g., \u0026ldquo;The girl is \u003cem\u003ebupping.\u003c/em\u003e Look! The girl is \u003cem\u003ebupping.\u003c/em\u003e\u0026rdquo;). In the orthography present condition, the T2L feature was enabled in the GoVisual\u0026trade; app so that the child saw the adult perform the actions, heard the target verb twice in a sentence frame, and saw the orthographic representation displayed dynamically for three seconds in uppercase letters (e.g., \u003cem\u003eBUPPING\u003c/em\u003e).\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eHardware and Software\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe GoVisual videos were screen recorded and edited for length using Adobe Premier. We placed edited videos in a repository on GitHub which was used as a base directory on the platform Lookit (Scott \u0026amp; Schulz, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR56\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2017\u003c/span\u003e). The Lookit platform uses JSON to program experiments and advertises to many potential participants. The Lookit platform allows for webcam recording of the experiment for reliability and data gathering purposes. There are approximately 2,000 three-year olds in their recruitment database.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cdiv id=\"Sec9\" class=\"Section2\"\u003e\u003ch2\u003eExperimental Design\u003c/h2\u003e\u003cp\u003eWe used a counterbalanced, 2 x 2 mixed-design to increase the power of the study compared to a between-subjects design (Hegde \u0026amp; Salvatore, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR30\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2019\u003c/span\u003e). Because learning may generalize when first exposed to the orthography present condition, we considered order as the between-subjects element of the design (first exposed to orthography absent or first exposed to orthography present). The within-subjects element of the design was symbol representation (orthography present or absent). For this element, we measured response accuracy in either a verb identification task or a sight word recognition task in each symbol representation condition (orthography present or absent). Random assignment was used so that half the participants received the orthography absent condition first and half the participants received the orthography present condition first. Therefore, we had four possible combinations of conditions and orders (List A orthography present/List B orthography absent; List A orthography absent/List B orthography present; List B orthography present/List A orthography absent; List B orthography absent/List A orthography present). We randomly assigned participants to lists and conditions to allow us to determine if there were generalization effects across conditions.\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv id=\"Sec10\" class=\"Section2\"\u003e\u003ch2\u003eMeasures\u003c/h2\u003e\u003cp\u003eDependent Measures\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eFor Cohort A, we measured accurate identification of the target verb as the primary dependent measure. If the child did not respond within the allotted 10 seconds, the trial was recorded as incorrect. The score was 1 for correct responses and 0 for incorrect or non-responses. A second analysis was performed whereby trials with no response were excluded, as it is difficult to ascertain what a child does not know versus what a child does not attend to on a given trial (Rapin et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR48\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2009\u003c/span\u003e). Percent correct was calculated by dividing the number correct by 4 (the number of verb trials in each condition) and multiplying by 100. In the second analysis, the number correct was divided by the number of trials with responses and this varied on an individual basis. For Cohort B, the primary dependent measure was the difference in scores from pre-test to post-test for each condition (ranging from \u0026minus;\u0026thinsp;4 to 4). For moderator analyses, we determined the number of consonants identified correctly in the letter identification task and converted the parent questionnaire into an ordinal scale (1 for Yes-responses, 0 for No-responses).\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eInterobserver Reliability\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWe recorded videos from the participants\u0026rsquo; webcams for interobserver reliability. Twenty participants\u0026rsquo; videos (25%; 12 from Cohort A and 8 from Cohort B) were viewed by a trained research assistant to determine interobserver agreement (IOA) for the dependent measures. The number of agreements was divided by the number of agreements plus disagreements and multiplied by 100 to determine the percent IOA. For the verb identification task for Cohort A, the percent IOA was calculated to be 90.3% with a Cohen\u0026rsquo;s \u003cem\u003eKappa\u003c/em\u003e of 0.84, an \u0026ldquo;almost perfect\u0026rdquo; agreement (Landis \u0026amp; Koch, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR39\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e1977\u003c/span\u003e). For the sight word identification task for Cohort B, the percent IOA was calculated to be 93.3% with a Cohen\u0026rsquo;s \u003cem\u003eKappa\u003c/em\u003e of 0.88, again an \u0026ldquo;almost perfect\u0026rdquo; agreement (Landis \u0026amp; Koch, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR39\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e1977\u003c/span\u003e).\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv id=\"Sec11\" class=\"Section2\"\u003e\u003ch2\u003eProcedures\u003c/h2\u003e\u003cp\u003eOverview\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe entire experiment took approximately 20 minutes, including the parent questionnaire. First, the parent recorded video consent to participate in the experiment. Then, the parent received instructions about setting up their webcam and how to seat their child. The parent then completed background questions regarding the child\u0026rsquo;s development and literacy skills and experiences (See Appendix A). Parents received a brief overview and instructions about how to avoid prompting their child to provide correct responses. Then, cohorts A and B followed the procedure as outlined in \u003cem\u003eFig.\u0026nbsp;1.\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eReading Skills\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e The participants completed a letter identification task to determine if the child could identify the consonants used in this experiment (i.e., B, P, F, D, G, S, H, N) in a field of two (see details below). Additionally, parents completed a questionnaire with questions about the availability of books in the home, the child\u0026rsquo;s interest in books, and literacy skills. This questionnaire was adapted and modified from Boudreau (\u003cspan citationid=\"CR14\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2005\u003c/span\u003e) to only include questions relevant to this project. See \u003cem\u003eAppendix A\u003c/em\u003e for a full list of questions.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ePointing Familiarization Phase\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe child viewed a video of an adult using child-directed speech and talking about pointing. The child heard, \u0026ldquo;We\u0026rsquo;re going to play a pointing game. Are you ready? See this? This is my pointer finger. I can use it to point to things. You try! Let\u0026rsquo;s point together. Ready? Like this! Let\u0026rsquo;s play more pointing games!\u0026rdquo; The child then saw a cat alone on the left side of the screen. The child heard, \u0026ldquo;Where\u0026rsquo;s the cat! (pause) Where\u0026rsquo;s the cat?\u0026rdquo; Then the child saw a ball on the right side of the screen. The child again received instructions to point to the ball. This served as preparation for all future experimental tasks and confirmed whether the webcam was mirrored.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eSight Word Recognition Pre-Test\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eTo measure the literacy skills of the participant, children in Cohort B completed a sight word recognition pre-test for the target words. Each target word appeared in a field of two, with a foil from the same list yoked to the target. Each target nonword was tested once for a total of 8 trials. No feedback on performance was given. Correct responses were scored a 1 and incorrect responses were scored a 0. Because children pointed to responses, parents clicked on the word to which their child pointed to confirm pointing responses. The child was directed to \u0026ldquo;Point to \u003cem\u003ebupping,\u0026rdquo;\u003c/em\u003e for example, and was required to respond within 10 seconds.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eExposure Phase\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe child was told, \u0026ldquo;We are going to learn some new words. Listen carefully so you can show me what you learned later!\u0026rdquo; The child viewed a video of the target action alone on the screen. We labeled the target action using the sentence frame, \u0026ldquo;The girl is \u003cem\u003everbing\u003c/em\u003e. Look! The girl is \u003cem\u003everbing.\u003c/em\u003e\u0026rdquo; Thus, for each target verb, the child heard the label twice. For verbs in the orthography present condition, the orthographic representation for the verb (e.g., \u003cem\u003eBUPPING)\u003c/em\u003e appeared on the screen for three seconds. See \u003cem\u003eFig.\u0026nbsp;2\u003c/em\u003e for screenshots of the exposure phase in each condition. We presented each of the four verbs from one list and then, for Cohort A participants, we proceeded to the testing phase for that list. We randomized the order of verb presentation once, and the same order was given to all participants.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eTesting Phase\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eImmediately after the exposure phase, children in Cohort A were assessed via a verb identification task. We presented two videos on the left and right sides of the screen and played for approximately 3 seconds (see \u003cem\u003eFig.\u0026nbsp;3\u003c/em\u003e). The videos then paused at an informative moment and the child heard, \u0026ldquo;Look! Point to \u003cem\u003everbing!\u0026rdquo;\u003c/em\u003e The child had 10 seconds to respond. No orthographic representations were present for any of the test phase trials and no feedback was given. Verbs were yoked to one another so that they were always presented together as each other\u0026rsquo;s foils. The order of test trials was randomized once, with the caveat that the last exposure trial would not be tested first. The order was presented to all participants. We asked parents to confirm their child\u0026rsquo;s pointing choices for reliability and so that issues with interpreting the webcam responses did not result in a loss of data. Correct responses were scored a 1 and incorrect responses and nonresponses were scored a 0. We coded nonresponses so that proportion correct could be calculated separately for trials with responses.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eSight-Word Recognition Post-Test\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe sight-word recognition post-test was identical to the sight-word recognition pre-test. We only administered this to Cohort B participants.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eLetter Identification Task\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAs a measure of early reading ability, the child was asked to identify each of the consonants used in the experiment. The child heard, \u0026ldquo;This is our last pointing game! Can you find the letter? Make sure to point!\u0026rdquo; The child saw two uppercase letters on each side of the screen and then heard, \u0026ldquo;Point to B,\u0026rdquo; for example. Each consonant was tested once for a total of eight trials. No corrective feedback was given. We asked parents to confirm their child\u0026rsquo;s pointing responses as a reliability and data-loss prevention measure.\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv id=\"Sec12\" class=\"Section2\"\u003e\u003ch2\u003eAnalysis Plan\u003c/h2\u003e\u003cp\u003eDue to the binary nature of the data collected (correct or incorrect), we used multilevel logistic models (binomial family to capture both individual variation in performance and to eliminate the need to transform the data. Multi-level models (MLMs), as opposed to repeated measures analysis of variance (RMANOVA), do not require an individual\u0026rsquo;s data points to be reduced to an average. This allows the researcher to capture more data on individual variability and account for inherent dependencies within a model (Harel \u0026amp; McAllister, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR28\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2019\u003c/span\u003e). Additionally, MLMs do not require transformation of dichotomous outcome variables as do RMANOVA.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eFor research question #1, we used a multilevel logistic model to determine if there were significant differences in identification accuracy between the orthography present and absent conditions. Additionally, we incorporated the order of conditions into the model (orthography absent first or orthography present first) to see if there was generalization from one condition to the other. We included participant as a random factor and orthography and order as fixed factors. First, we created an empty model using the generalized linear model effect (glmer() function) in R (v. 2022.12.0) (R Development Core Team, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR49\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2011\u003c/span\u003e). To determine if participants scored above chance, we assessed whether the intercept significantly differed from 0.5 (chance performance on the two-choice array) using the \u003cem\u003ez-\u003c/em\u003etest and \u003cem\u003ep-\u003c/em\u003evalue output in an empty model (\u003cem\u003eglmer(correct ~ (1|ID))\u003c/em\u003e (Arunachalam et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR6\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2016\u003c/span\u003e). The empty model uses random intercepts from each participant to account for individual variability in performance. Second, to determine if participants benefitted from orthographic support during the identification tasks, we entered the orthographic condition (present or absent) into the model as a fixed effect (\u003cem\u003eglmer(correct ~ (1|ID)\u0026thinsp;+\u0026thinsp;orthography condition)\u003c/em\u003e). The orthographic condition was dummy coded as -0.5 for the orthography absent condition and 0.5 for the orthography present condition so as not to make assumptions about the benefit of orthography and so that the combination of the two variables sums to zero. Additionally, we entered task order into the model as a fixed effect (\u003cem\u003eglmer(correct ~ (1|ID)\u0026thinsp;+\u0026thinsp;orthography condition\u0026thinsp;+\u0026thinsp;order)\u003c/em\u003e) to determine if there was generalization between conditions. Exploratory analyses included the interaction of chronological age, letter identification skills, and parent-reported literacy interest on the accuracy of identifying the target verbs in the orthography present condition.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eTo analyze the results of the sight word recognition test, we used a paired sample t-test to compare the difference between pre-test and post-test scores in each condition. Because participants could have three possible outcome scores (same, worse, or better), multilevel models were not appropriate for this analysis. Only outcome variables with two possibilities (i.e., binomial family) or continuous variables (i.e., gaussian) are appropriate for multilevel modeling.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eExpected Results\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eBased on previous research, we expected participants to demonstrate higher accuracy in identifying verbs in the orthography present condition compared to the orthography absent condition (Clark \u0026amp; Reuterski\u0026ouml;ld, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR20\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2023\u003c/span\u003e; O\u0026rsquo;Leary \u0026amp; Ehri, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR44\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2020\u003c/span\u003e; Lucas \u0026amp; Norbury, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR41\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2014\u003c/span\u003e; Baron et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR11\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2018\u003c/span\u003e). We expected that order would not impact learning as we used different actions and words in the two different conditions. We also expected that chronological age, letter identification skills, and literacy experience would moderate whether participants would benefit from orthography present for both the verb identification task and the sight-word recognition post-test.\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/div\u003e"},{"header":"Results","content":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan type=\"Underline\" class=\"Underline\" name=\"Emphasis\"\u003eRQ1: Does an orthography present condition result in higher accuracy in a verb identification task compared to an orthography absent condition in TD three-year old children?\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eOn average, participants accurately identified the correct action 44% (SD = .50) of the time across both orthography present and orthography absent conditions. By running an empty model (\u003cem\u003ecorrect ~ (1|ID)\u003c/em\u003e), we first determined that participants did not perform significantly better than chance, as the intercept was not significant (intercept estimate \u003cem\u003ep\u003c/em\u003e = .107). In the orthography present condition, the average proportion correct was 46% (SD = .49) while in the orthography absent condition, the average proportion correct was 43% (SD = .50). See \u003cem\u003eFig.\u0026nbsp;4\u003c/em\u003e for a box plot of participant performance in each condition. We built a second model to determine if the presence of orthography during the exposure phase significantly improved the accuracy in the test phase. Participants did not perform significantly different for verbs learned in the orthography present and orthography absent conditions (\u003cem\u003ep\u003c/em\u003e = .475).\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eParticipants were only required to respond to four trials in each condition; we were therefore unable to calculate results above chance on an individual basis as the probability of getting four of four correct on a two-forced choice task does not meet criteria to reject the null hypothesis (\u003cem\u003ep\u003c/em\u003e = 0.0625) based on binomial probability. Thus, even if the participant was 100% accurate on all identification trials in a condition, we could still not determine if that individual performed significantly above chance. When all trials were taken into consideration, a child would have to accurately respond to 7 out of 8 trials to perform significantly above chance (binomial \u003cem\u003ep\u003c/em\u003e = .035). Only three participants in Cohort A performed significantly above chance using these criteria.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eTo determine if participants performed better in the orthography present condition during verb learning when trials with no response were removed, we built a third model. The empty model again revealed that participants did not perform above chance (\u003cem\u003ep\u003c/em\u003e = 0.142). A fourth model, with the orthography condition as a fixed effect was not significant (\u003cem\u003ep\u003c/em\u003e = 0.727).\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eBecause the order of conditions may have impacted accuracy across conditions, we entered order into a fifth model as a fixed effect. Order was not significant (\u003cem\u003ep\u003c/em\u003e = 0.205). To ensure order did not interact with orthography condition, we built a sixth model with an interaction term (orthography condition * order). There were no significant fixed or interaction effects.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan type=\"Underline\" class=\"Underline\" name=\"Emphasis\"\u003eRQ2: Does a child’s relative benefit from the presence of a written word vary according to age, letter identification abilities and/or parent-reported literacy interest?\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e Because participants did not perform significantly better for words taught in the presence of orthography, we analyzed age, letter identification abilities, and parent-reported literacy interest as fixed effects. We entered mean-centered age into a multi-level logistic model (\u003cem\u003eglmer(correct ~ ageC + (1|ID)).\u003c/em\u003e As the model was nearly unidentifiable, age was rescaled and found to not significantly contribute to accuracy in the verb identification task (\u003cem\u003ep\u003c/em\u003e = 0.1569). We next entered letter identification ability into a model (\u003cem\u003eglmer(correct ~ letterID + (1|ID))\u003c/em\u003e. Letter identification abilities were not a significant contributor to accuracy in the verb identification task (\u003cem\u003ep\u003c/em\u003e = 0.361). Because of the ordinal nature of the parent-reported literacy interest, we formed two groups by median-splitting the participants into high and low literacy interest groups. The mean literacy interest score of Cohort A was 21.68; therefore, we placed participants with a lower score into the low literacy interest group, and participants with a 21.68 or higher scores into the high literacy interest group. We built a model with reading interest entered as a fixed effect (\u003cem\u003eglmer(correct ~ ReadingInterest + (1|ID))\u003c/em\u003e. Reading interest was not a significant predictor of accuracy (\u003cem\u003ep\u003c/em\u003e = 0.239).\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eTo determine if any of the potential moderator variables interacted with the orthography condition, several multilevel models with interaction terms were built. No independent variables significantly interacted with orthography to impact accuracy. Those with higher reading interest were, on average, more accurate in both orthography absent and orthography present conditions. Those with lower reading interest, were more accurate, on average, in the orthography present condition compared to the orthography absent condition. See \u003cem\u003eFig.\u0026nbsp;5\u003c/em\u003e for a visual representation of this exploratory relationship. We also explored the relationship between letter identification ability and orthography (see \u003cem\u003eFig.\u0026nbsp;6).\u003c/em\u003e Those with better letter identification abilities were more accurate in identifying verbs, regardless of orthography condition. The mean accuracy across each independent variable in the orthography absent and orthography present condition is presented in Table\u0026nbsp;\u003cspan refid=\"Tab3\" class=\"InternalRef\"\u003e3\u003c/span\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003cdiv class=\"gridtable\"\u003e\u003cdiv align=\"left\" class=\"colspec\" colname=\"c1\" colnum=\"1\"\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv align=\"char\" char=\".\" class=\"colspec\" colname=\"c2\" colnum=\"2\"\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv align=\"char\" char=\".\" class=\"colspec\" colname=\"c3\" colnum=\"3\"\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003ctable float=\"Yes\" id=\"Tab3\" border=\"1\"\u003e\u003ccaption language=\"En\"\u003e\u003cdiv class=\"CaptionNumber\"\u003eTable 3\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv class=\"CaptionContent\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eAverage proportion correct for median-split groups across conditions for the verb identification task.\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003c/caption\u003e\u003ccolgroup cols=\"3\"\u003e\u003c/colgroup\u003e\u003cthead\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003cth align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eMedian-Split Dependent Variable\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/th\u003e\u003cth align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eOrthography Present\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/th\u003e\u003cth align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eOrthography Absent\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/th\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003c/thead\u003e\u003ctbody\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eHigher Reading Interest\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e0.45 (0.50)\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e0.46 (0.50)\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eLower Reading Interest\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e0.47 (0.50)\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e0.41 (0.49)\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eHigher Letter Identification\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e0.47 (0.50)\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e0.43 (0.50)\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eLower Letter Identification\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e0.42 (0.50)\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e0.42 (0.50)\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eOlder Age\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e0.46 (0.50)\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e0.45 (0.50)\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eYounger Age\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e0.45 (0.50)\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e0.41 (0.49)\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003c/tbody\u003e\u003ctfoot\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd colspan=\"3\"\u003e\u003cspan type=\"ItalicSmallCaps\" class=\"ItalicSmallCaps\" name=\"Emphasis\"\u003eNote\u003c/span\u003e: \u003cspan type=\"SmallCaps\" class=\"SmallCaps\" name=\"Emphasis\"\u003eStandard deviations are shown in parentheses.\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003c/tfoot\u003e\u003c/table\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan type=\"Underline\" class=\"Underline\" name=\"Emphasis\"\u003eRQ3: Do TD three-year old children improve in sight word recognition from pre-test to post-test when verbs are shown in an orthography present condition compared to an orthography absent condition?\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eBecause previous research has demonstrated that sight word recognition improves with the provision of T2L technology, we performed a one-tailed paired samples t-test. We compared the difference in scores on the sight word recognition task in each condition (orthography present and orthography absent). To test for normality, a Shapiro-Wilk normality test was performed with a nonsignificant result (\u003cem\u003ep\u003c/em\u003e = .20). There was a significant difference in sight word recognition for verbs presented in the orthography present condition compared to in the orthography absent condition (\u003cem\u003et\u003c/em\u003e = 1.79, \u003cem\u003ep\u003c/em\u003e = 0.04). On average, participants’ scores from pre-test to post-test improved by 0.5 more points in the orthography present condition compared to the orthography absent condition. See \u003cem\u003eFig.\u0026nbsp;7\u003c/em\u003e for a visual representation of sight word recognition across conditions.\u003c/p\u003e"},{"header":"Discussion","content":"\u003cdiv id=\"Sec15\" class=\"Section2\"\u003e\u003ch2\u003eDoes Orthography Support Verb Learning?\u003c/h2\u003e\u003cp\u003eWe investigated whether TD three-year old children would benefit from the presence of orthography during a novel verb learning task. Participants heard eight verbs two times each in a sentence frame, and for half of the verbs, the participants also saw the orthographic representation for three seconds. Participants were then tested for their recall of the verbs in a single condition in a two-alternative forced choice task. They did not perform significantly differently on the posttest for verbs taught in the orthography present and orthography absent condition during the verb identification task.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIt is possible that orthographic representations do not support verb learning but there are other potential explanations. For example, the task may have been too difficult. Participants, on average, did not perform above chance in either condition, suggesting that this task was too difficult for them. Only three participants met binomial probability criteria for \u0026lsquo;passing\u0026rsquo; across all eight post-test trials (6% of participants). The poor performance of participants may be due to several factors. Although we used content nouns, not pronouns, in the exposure phase of the experiment, we paused the ongoing action and then labeled the action with an \u003cem\u003e-ing\u003c/em\u003e aspect marker, indicating an ongoing activity which may be confusing (Ambalu et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR2\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e1997\u003c/span\u003e; Horvath \u0026amp; Arunachalam, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR31\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2019\u003c/span\u003e). We also did not have the participant actively engage in the novel actions. Researchers have found that children remembered the novel actions better if they had performed the action prior to exposure (Aussems \u0026amp; Kita, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR9\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2021\u003c/span\u003e). Participants were only exposed to each novel verb twice. Although prior research has used two exposures, these studies have used immediate recall (e.g., Syrett et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR58\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2014\u003c/span\u003e; Arunachalam \u0026amp; Waxman, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR5\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2015\u003c/span\u003e). Prior studies have provided a familiarization phase with two or fewer exposures of a target verb and then immediately tested for identification (e.g., Arunachalam \u0026amp; Waxman, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR5\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2015\u003c/span\u003e; He et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR29\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2020\u003c/span\u003e; Horvath \u0026amp; Arunachalam, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR32\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2021\u003c/span\u003e). We provided two exposures of a target verb sequentially across four verbs and then, after four verbs, tested each verb in a post-test. Because of the time between exposure and post-test, three-year old children may have forgotten the verb labels (Riches et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR50\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2005\u003c/span\u003e). We also taught eight verbs to the participants whereas prior research has more frequently taught six or fewer verbs (e.g., Arunachalam \u0026amp; Waxman, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR5\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2015\u003c/span\u003e; Brackenbury \u0026amp; Fey, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR15\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2003\u003c/span\u003e).\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAnother potential issue is that participants only saw the orthographic representations for three seconds using the T2L\u0026copy; technology. Thus, the representations were not non-transient (Ricketts et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR51\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2009\u003c/span\u003e) as has been the case in previous studies of orthographic facilitation (e.g., Alt et al, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR1\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2019\u003c/span\u003e; Baron et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR11\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2018\u003c/span\u003e; Lucas \u0026amp; Norbury, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR41\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2014\u003c/span\u003e; Ricketts et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR52\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2015\u003c/span\u003e). Participants may need to view the orthographic representations longer to derive benefit in identification tasks at an early age.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAnecdotally, many children commented during the experiment that they wanted to go outside or asked if the \u0026lsquo;game was over yet.\u0026rsquo; This could be an indication of boredom. The experiment took between 10 and 15 minutes. For an online, asynchronous study, this may be too long for the average three-year-old. Other online, asynchronous studies have used 10-minute tasks with success (e.g., Lapidow et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR40\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2021\u003c/span\u003e; Scott et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR55\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2017\u003c/span\u003e). Although we notified parents that they could pause the experiment at any time, parents rarely used this option.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eLapidow and colleagues found that participants needed untimed tasks in a Lookit-based experiment with three-year-old children (2021). Participants more often gave a response when a manual button press was required to proceed to the next trial compared to a 20-second automated time limit. As participants in this experiment were limited to 10 seconds to complete each trial, this could have impacted the number of trials without a response.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eOther studies with preschool-aged children have used very short words to demonstrate an orthographic facilitation effect (e.g., O\u0026rsquo;Leary \u0026amp; Ehri, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR44\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2020\u003c/span\u003e). O\u0026rsquo;Leary and Ehri used two-letter CV words with preschool-aged children and demonstrated a benefit in proper name recall when the orthographic representations had been present during learning. In this experiment, we used four-letter words\u0026thinsp;+\u0026thinsp;\u003cem\u003eing\u003c/em\u003e endings. For preliterate children, this may have been too complex; however, because a benefit for sight word recognition was exhibited, children processed the orthographic representation to some extent.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ePerhaps participants did not demonstrate an orthographic facilitation effect because of their level of literacy development. Older children with more literacy skills may demonstrate an orthographic facilitation effect for verb identification. O\u0026rsquo;Leary and Ehri (\u003cspan citationid=\"CR44\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2020\u003c/span\u003e) found that preschool-aged children benefitted from spellings when learning proper nouns, but those children named several letters and some read simple words. Our participants identified, on average, 6.78 out of the 8 letters tested. A letter naming task, or a letter-sound task, may have resulted in more significant exploratory moderator findings. There may be a developmental point at which orthographic representations become supportive of verb learning, particularly for 7-letter words with imperfect letter-sound correspondence. As we saw a significant interaction between reading interest and orthographic representation, with those with higher reading interest performing more poorly in verb identification in the orthography present condition, children may be focusing too much effort on attempting to decode the spelling at this young age. For those interested in reading and letters, the letters may serve as a distraction rather than an aid to learning.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e Out of the fifty participants, 15 of them demonstrated an orthographic facilitation effect, performing better on the verb identification post-test for verbs taught in the orthography present condition. On average, these participants were 23% accurate on orthography absent trials and 60% accurate on orthography present trials. When trials without a response were removed, 18 demonstrated an orthographic facilitation effect with 26% accuracy on orthography absent trials and 56% accuracy on orthography present trials. Those who responded positively to orthographic representations had only slight differences in reading interest, letter identification, and age, indicating that other moderators are driving an orthographic facilitation effect. Potential moderators could be overall expressive vocabulary skills, as prior studies have demonstrated the power of expressive vocabulary to drive further vocabulary growth (e.g., Joseph et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR34\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2019\u003c/span\u003e; Clark \u0026amp; Reuterski\u0026ouml;ld, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR20\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2023\u003c/span\u003e). Other studies have also found a link between receptive vocabulary skills and the orthographic facilitation effect (e.g., Salins et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR54\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2023\u003c/span\u003e). Those with higher expressive and/or receptive vocabulary skills may be adept at learning new words in a reading context. Skilled readers learn more words compared to lesser skilled readers because they efficiently bind orthographic representations, phonological representations, and word meaning (Ehri \u0026amp; Rosenthal, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR24\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2007\u003c/span\u003e).\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv id=\"Sec16\" class=\"Section2\"\u003e\u003ch2\u003eVerb Learning and the Lexical Quality Hypothesis\u003c/h2\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe data from this study suggests that, for the verb identification task, orthographic representations do not support verb learning in TD three-year old children. Is there a difference with verbs when children are creating semantic, phonological, and orthographic links when compared to nouns (Perfetti \u0026amp; Hart, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR47\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2002\u003c/span\u003e)? We think not. Although the participants could, on average, identify the letters used in the experimental stimuli, it is possible that more literacy skills are required to benefit from orthographic representations during verb learning, particularly for longer words. Participants in the O\u0026rsquo;Leary and Ehri study (2020) could name most of the letters of the alphabet if presented in a random order and use this information to learn CV proper names more quickly (e.g., LU). Perhaps letter naming or letter-sound correspondence skills are a developmental requirement of the orthographic facilitation effect (Chambr\u0026egrave; et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR17\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2020\u003c/span\u003e; O\u0026rsquo;Leary \u0026amp; Ehri, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR44\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2020\u003c/span\u003e). Future research should explore whether those with more literacy skills, would demonstrate a benefit for learning verbs with the support of orthographic representations. Orthographic facilitation may work as an inverted U-shaped curve; orthographic representations may not be helpful for beginning or advanced readers (who generate their own mental graphemic representations), but for those who have established letter-sound correspondence skills (i.e., those in first and second grade), orthographic representations may be beneficial. Svaldi and colleagues (\u003cspan citationid=\"CR57\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2024\u003c/span\u003e) did not see a benefit for children aged 8 through 12 for orthographic representations during verb learning. These participants may have fallen into the category of already self-producing mental graphemic representations; thus, providing orthographic representations did not improve verb learning.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWe know there are strong links between orthographic representations and phonological representations (Ehri \u0026amp; Rosenthal, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR24\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2007\u003c/span\u003e); as such, all published experiments on orthographic facilitation have demonstrated a positive effect for naming post-tests (e.g., Chambr\u0026egrave; et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR16\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2017\u003c/span\u003e; Chambr\u0026egrave; et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR17\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2020\u003c/span\u003e; Lucas \u0026amp; Norbury, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR41\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2014\u003c/span\u003e; O\u0026rsquo;Leary \u0026amp; Ehri, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR44\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2020\u003c/span\u003e; Salins et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR54\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2023\u003c/span\u003e). What is less clear are the links between orthographic representations and meaning and phonological representations and meaning (see \u003cem\u003eFig.\u0026nbsp;8\u003c/em\u003e). Many studies have failed to demonstrate a benefit for orthographic representations in spoken word to picture matching post-tests (e.g., Chambr\u0026egrave; et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR16\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2017\u003c/span\u003e; O\u0026rsquo;Leary \u0026amp; Ehri, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR44\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2020\u003c/span\u003e; Ricketts et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR52\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2015\u003c/span\u003e; for a review, see Colenbrander et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR21\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2019\u003c/span\u003e), often attributing the lack of a benefit to ceiling effects. As our participants struggled with the verb identification task and did not perform above chance, ceiling effects were not a factor. Perhaps children did not have enough exposure to the verbs, nor enough time to view the orthographic representations to create stronger links. Because this task was inadvertently too difficult for the participants, further research is needed to determine if verbs behave differently from nouns. With participant and task manipulations such as a wider age range, a decrease in the amount of time between exposure and testing, and a reduction in task duration, we will investigate if the lexical quality hypothesis holds true for verbs as well as nouns.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e[Insert \u003cem\u003eFig.\u0026nbsp;8\u003c/em\u003e]\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv id=\"Sec17\" class=\"Section2\"\u003e\u003ch2\u003eSight Word Acquisition Benefits\u003c/h2\u003e\u003cp\u003eResults from Cohort B indicate that children attended to the orthographic representations during the exposure phase. Participants improved from pre-test to post-test, but only for those words for which the orthographic representations were shown. Whereas participants performed worse, on average, on the post-test for verbs in the orthography absent condition, participants performed better, on average, for verbs in the orthography present condition. We did not find significant pairwise correlations between participants\u0026rsquo; difference scores from pre-test to post-test in the orthography present condition and their reading interest, letter identification skills, or age.\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv id=\"Sec18\" class=\"Section2\"\u003e\u003ch2\u003eReading Measures\u003c/h2\u003e\u003cp\u003eParents reported how engaged and interested their children were in reading activities. We also directly tested children\u0026rsquo;s ability to identify letters in a two-alternative forced choice task. These measures were correlated with one-another (Spearman\u0026rsquo;s correlation; Cohort A, ρ\u0026thinsp;=\u0026thinsp;0.44, \u003cem\u003ep\u003c/em\u003e\u0026thinsp;=\u0026thinsp;0.002; Cohort B ρ\u0026thinsp;=\u0026thinsp;0.62, \u003cem\u003ep\u003c/em\u003e\u0026thinsp;\u0026lt;\u0026thinsp;0.001) indicating that these measures are likely addressing the same concepts. It is likely that the reading interest survey that caregivers completed is a valid measure of reading interest and engagement as it was moderately correlated with the letter identification task.\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv id=\"Sec19\" class=\"Section2\"\u003e\u003ch2\u003eLimitations\u003c/h2\u003e\u003cp\u003eLimitations of this study include: 1) we were unable to conduct a binomial probability analysis, 2) this is a fully automated experiment without any experimenter input or guidance, 3) we had high attrition rates which may have impacted results, and 4) the task may have been too difficult for this age group. The number of test trials limited the analyses we could perform. Because of fears of boredom, we only tested each verb once, resulting in 4 trials for each condition. This did not allow us to perform binomial probability calculations to test which participants \u0026lsquo;passed\u0026rsquo; and who \u0026lsquo;failed.\u0026rsquo; Future studies should include at least six trials per condition so that pass/fail criteria can be set. This may require that a between-subjects design is employed to prevent boredom with the experimental tasks.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eBecause experimenters were not present for the tasks, children may have forgotten to point at the screen or may have lost interest quickly. Although we looked to eliminate trials if parents provided too much prompting, it was sometimes difficult to tell what parents may have done off camera to impact their child\u0026rsquo;s responses. Some parents were blatant in their prompting, particularly in the sight word recognition task (e.g., asking their child to sound out the word or saying the first sound in the word). Caregivers also struggled to keep some participants on task. Online studies lack the tight experimental control of in-person research and thus, there may be some variability in the reliability of collected data. However, the Lookit platform has been validated in several unmoderated studies (e.g., Lapidow et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR40\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2021\u003c/span\u003e; Nelson \u0026amp; Oakes, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR43\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2021\u003c/span\u003e; Scott et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR55\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2017\u003c/span\u003e; Rocha \u0026amp; Addyman, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR53\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2022\u003c/span\u003e) and since the COVID-19 pandemic many studies have investigated behavior using webcams (e.g., Elliot et al., 2022; Szente, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR59\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2020\u003c/span\u003e). Thus, it is feasible and appropriate to collect this data in an unmoderated fashion with this age group. Future studies might include more participants to account for parental/caregiver over- or under-involvement in experimental tasks and allow greater response time to ensure participants have adequate time to respond to a computer prompt (Lapidow et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR40\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2021\u003c/span\u003e).\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAttrition was an additional obstacle in this experiment. We had several participants (N\u0026thinsp;=\u0026thinsp;13 for Cohort A; N\u0026thinsp;=\u0026thinsp;5 for Cohort B) who did not finish the study, potentially because of boredom. Our attrition rate, combining participants who did not complete the task and those who did not meet inclusion criteria, was 31%. When researchers perform studies in-person, they frequently see 14% attrition (Scott \u0026amp; Schulz, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR56\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2017\u003c/span\u003e). Other online, asynchronous studies have also seen higher rates of attrition ranging from 32\u0026ndash;41% (Lapidow et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR40\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2021\u003c/span\u003e; Scott et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR55\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2017\u003c/span\u003e). Future studies should account for 30% attrition rates for online, asynchronous studies due to boredom, technological issues, parental prompting, and participants not meeting inclusion criteria.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eParticipants did not perform above chance on the verb identification task. This indicates that the task was exceedingly difficult. Because of fears of participants performing at ceiling levels due to the receptive nature of the task, we inadvertently made the task too difficult. Future studies should a) test each verb immediately after exposure, b) study orthographic facilitation across ages 3 through 7, and c) use a between-subjects design. Although we did not see a significant improvement in verb identification accuracy in the orthography present condition, participants did improve in their sight word recognition after exposure to the orthographic representations. Although orthographic representations may not help children learn the meaning of novel verbs at age 3, it does aid in their sight word recognition of these words. Because of this finding, we think it is imperative to provide orthographic representations on AAC systems as literacy skills are crucial for those with complex communication needs.\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/div\u003e"},{"header":"Conclusion","content":"\u003cp\u003eThis study added to the literature by providing evidence that orthographic representations may not support verb learning for young children at the earliest stages of literacy development; it is uknown what literacy skill are necessary to promote verb learning. Further investigation is needed to determine if manipulations to the experimental task will increase participants\u0026rsquo; performance overall and result in performance above chance. This study has provided foundational knowledge necessary to expand this research to minimally speaking school-age autistic children. We now know to a) widen the age range to determine the developmental trajectory of the orthographic facilitation effect and b) test for extension of the target verb directly after exposure. We will also measure letter-sound correspondence, as this may be a key skill to unlocking the benefits of orthographic representations. It is imperative that we know if orthographic representations support word learning across both nouns and verbs for minimally speaking school-age autistic children. The goal is to expand the expressive communication skills of AAC users and encourage service providers to emphasize literacy skills for this population.\u003c/p\u003e"},{"header":"Declarations","content":"\u003ch2\u003eAcknowledgements\u003c/h2\u003e\u003cp\u003eWe wish to express our appreciation to the children and families that participated in this research. We want to thank the Children Helping Science for their help with recruitment. We also thank [Colleague1] and [Colleague2] for their support with design and statistical analysis. Thank you to [Graduate Assistant] for your help with reliability.\u003c/p\u003e\u003ch2\u003eData Availability Statement:\u003c/h2\u003e\u003cp\u003eDeidentified data are available upon request from the first author.\u003c/p\u003e"},{"header":"References","content":"\u003col\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eAlt M, Gray S, Hogan TP, Schlesinger N, Cowan N (2019) Spoken word learning differences among children with dyslexia, concomitant dyslexia and developmental language disorder, and typical development. Lang Speech Hear Serv Sch 50(4):540\u0026ndash;561\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eAmbalu D, Chiat S, Pring T (1997) When is it best to hear a verb? The effects of the timing and focus of verb models on children\u0026rsquo;s learning of verbs. 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Ann Dyslexia 73(1):148\u0026ndash;163\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003c/ol\u003e"}],"fulltextSource":"","fullText":"","funders":[],"hasAdminPriorityOnWorkflow":false,"hasManuscriptDocX":true,"hasOptedInToPreprint":true,"hasPassedJournalQc":"","hasAnyPriority":true,"hideJournal":true,"highlight":"","institution":"New York University","isAcceptedByJournal":false,"isAuthorSuppliedPdf":false,"isDeskRejected":"","isHiddenFromSearch":false,"isInQc":false,"isInWorkflow":false,"isPdf":false,"isPdfUpToDate":true,"isWithdrawnOrRetracted":false,"journal":{"display":true,"email":"[email protected]","identity":"researchsquare","isNatureJournal":false,"hasQc":true,"allowDirectSubmit":true,"externalIdentity":"","sideBox":"","snPcode":"","submissionUrl":"/submission","title":"Research Square","twitterHandle":"researchsquare","acdcEnabled":true,"dfaEnabled":false,"editorialSystem":"","reportingPortfolio":"","inReviewEnabled":false,"inReviewRevisionsEnabled":true},"keywords":"verb learning, orthographic facilitation, vocabulary acquisition, typical development","lastPublishedDoi":"10.21203/rs.3.rs-7473723/v1","lastPublishedDoiUrl":"https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-7473723/v1","license":{"name":"CC BY 4.0","url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"},"manuscriptAbstract":"\u003cp\u003eChildren, as young as four years of age, have demonstrated enhanced noun learning when presented with orthographic representations during word learning tasks. This study sought to determine if three-year-old typically developing children would demonstrate an orthographic facilitation effect during an asynchronous computer-based \u003cem\u003everb\u003c/em\u003e learning task. One-hundred ten children were taught 8 novel verbs by presenting videos of novel actions paired with novel labels in sentence frames. Four novel verbs were taught with orthographic support present and four were taught without orthographic support. Participants were exposed to the words a total of two times and then given a post-test to assess identification and word recognition. Additionally, we gathered data on letter identification ability and parent-reported measures of literacy interest and experiences. Participants demonstrated no orthographic facilitation effect for learning verbs, but a marginally significant increase in sight word recognition from pretest to posttest when orthographic representations were present during the exposure phase. Most children were able to identify the letters used in the experiment; however, we lack information on required literacy skills underlying benefits from orthographic representations during word learning tasks. Certain literacy skills, extending beyond letter identification, may be essential for children to benefit from orthographic support. Future research will incorporate additional literacy skill measures, such as letter-sound correspondence and word decoding, to further elucidate specific skills necessary for optimal outcomes in orthography-supported noun and verb learning tasks.\u003c/p\u003e","manuscriptTitle":"Orthographic Support for Verb Identification in Typically Developing Three-Year-Old Children","msid":"","msnumber":"","nonDraftVersions":[{"code":1,"date":"2025-09-02 17:25:30","doi":"10.21203/rs.3.rs-7473723/v1","editorialEvents":[{"type":"communityComments","content":0}],"status":"published","journal":{"display":true,"email":"[email protected]","identity":"researchsquare","isNatureJournal":false,"hasQc":true,"allowDirectSubmit":true,"externalIdentity":"","sideBox":"","snPcode":"","submissionUrl":"/submission","title":"Research Square","twitterHandle":"researchsquare","acdcEnabled":true,"dfaEnabled":false,"editorialSystem":"","reportingPortfolio":"","inReviewEnabled":false,"inReviewRevisionsEnabled":true}}],"origin":"","ownerIdentity":"3ec3e7fb-429f-40e6-be4d-95504c92c815","owner":[],"postedDate":"September 2nd, 2025","published":true,"recentEditorialEvents":[],"rejectedJournal":[],"revision":"","amendment":"","status":"posted","subjectAreas":[{"id":53800926,"name":"Audiology \u0026 Speech-Language Pathology"},{"id":53800927,"name":"Educational Psychology"},{"id":53800928,"name":"Psychology"}],"tags":[],"updatedAt":"2025-09-02T17:25:30+00:00","versionOfRecord":[],"versionCreatedAt":"2025-09-02 17:25:30","video":"","vorDoi":"","vorDoiUrl":"","workflowStages":[]},"version":"v1","identity":"rs-7473723","journalConfig":"researchsquare"},"__N_SSP":true},"page":"/article/[identity]/[[...version]]","query":{"redirect":"/article/rs-7473723","identity":"rs-7473723","version":["v1"]},"buildId":"8U1c8b4HqxoKbykW_rLl7","isFallback":false,"isExperimentalCompile":false,"dynamicIds":[84888],"gssp":true,"scriptLoader":[]}