Children's Anagram Solutions as an Index of Linguistic and Cognitive Development

SCHNEIDERMAN, MAITA H.; REBER, ARTHUR S.; and HAINLINE, LouISE. Children's Anagram Solutions as an Index of Linguistic and Cognitive Development. CHILD DEVELOPMENT, 1978, 49, 765-772. In a novel application of an anagram task, children between the ages of 6 and 12 years were asked to generate as many words as possible for each of 7 target words. The total number of solutions produced increased with age. Analyses of error patterns suggested that the performance of the older children was superior because of their greater knowledge of the orthographic and phonetic rules of English. Analyses of correct solutions revealed developmental trends toward solutions which represented more extensive rearrangements of the target word's letters, including solutions created from letters in different syllables in the target. Older children also showed a greater tendency to break up consonant clusters and to use previously produced solutions to generate other solution words. The results are discussed in the context of the Piagetian process of decentration and Gleitman and Rozin's historical analysis of writing systems.