Relationship of cognitive style and word type for beginning readers

This research investigation sought to determine whether a beginning reader's preferred cognitive construct would influence the type of reading words first learned. Field independent/field dependent kindergartners were presented with maximal and minimal contrast words. A 2x2 repeated measures design with 21 subjects per cell showed that field‐independent kindergartners learned significantly more words than field dependents. Moreover, all kindergartners learned significantly more words with maximal feature contrast than words in the same CVC spelling pattern, suggesting that early readers would profit from maximal contrast, high frequency words as first reading experiences.