Preschoolers’ private speech during spelling in Hebrew: the role of word structure and letter position

The study’s aims were to (a) evaluate preschoolers’ use of private speech (overt talk to themselves) during spelling; and (b) study how it is affected by the nature of orthography. Participants were 197 Hebrew speaking Israeli preschoolers (109 girls and 88 boys) (M = 5.6 years). Children spelled 12 words (N =44 letters) that represented one of three phonological word structures in terms of their consonants (C) and vowels (V): CV.CVC, CV.CV.CVC,...