The Role of Discourse Context in Developing Word Form Representations: A Surprising Relationship Between Reading and Learning

To acquire representations of printed words, children must attend to the written form of a word and link this form with the word’s pronunciation. When words are read in context, they may be read with less attention to these features, which can lead to poorer word form retention. Two studies with young children (ages 5 through 8) confirmed this hypothesis. In our studies, children attempted to read words they could not previously read, during a self teaching period, either in context or in isolation. Later they were tested on how well they learned the words as a function of self-teaching condition (isolation or context). Consistent with previous research, children read more words accurately in context than in isolation during self-teaching; however, we found that children had better retention for words learned in isolation. Furthermore, this benefit from learning in isolation was larger for less skilled readers. This effect of poorer word retention when words are read in context is somewhat surprising because context has been shown to facilitate word identification; however, we have found that it can have differential effects on the acquisition of a permanent word representation. We discuss factors that may control this effect of context, especially the role of the child’s skill level and the demands of learning new word representations at the beginning of reading instruction.