About the project
Summary: The thesis focuses on and presents the long term effects of two different metalinguistic intervention programs in kindergarten on reading development. Experimental group 1 (N=87) received a training program with activities that focused the children's attention on the internal sound structure of words. Experimental group 2 (N=107) received a training program with activities that focused the children's attention on morphological parts of words (e.g. prefixes, suffixes). A control group (N=31) received no intervention but was regularly visited by the experimenter. The children received training 25-30 minutes weekly for a total period of 17 weeks. Mean age at the time of pretest was 75.6 months. Both the group receiving metaphonological training and the group receiving metamorphological training benefited immediately in terms of their reading development. Significant interactions between group and mother's education, however, suggested that children of poorly educated mothers profited the most from metaphonological training. The analyses also showed that children with highly educated mothers profited the most from metamorphological training. These results have implications for teaching and therapy.