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Four experiments were conducted to examine the validity of artificial orthography as a research device. Although widely cited studies have used several artificial orthographies to investigate basic reading processes, this study seems to indicate that artificial orthographies are not comparable to each other or to the English alphabet. Two experiments used paired associate tasks with kindergarten, first-grade, and college students; one experiment used a transfer task with first-grade students; one experiment used a visual discrimination task with kindergarten students. Varying results were obtained with the orthographies as a function of (a) the type of task the student was required to perform, (b) the age of the student, (c) the size of the stimuli, and (d) the number of response distractors presented. The results indicate that the use of artificial orthography is not valid when findings are generalized from artificial orthographies to the English alphabet and from various aged individuals to the way young children learn actual letters and words in English.

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