Before formal literacy training begins, preschool children may already learn about basic characteristics of the writing system used in their culture. One example is the direction of the script (e.g., left-to-right for the Latin script). Because directionality cannot be easily inferred from the script appearance, the question arises as to how preliterate children obtain such knowledge. One possible way may be through observing the spatial behavior of reading adults.

In this study, we examine whether a short joint-reading session in which an adult traces the text with a finger while reading to a child may influence the way in which the child organizes early reading and writing attempts. We tested 136 German-speaking preschoolers (age range: 4.0-6.0 years). To prevent influences from early experience with the Latin script, we designed a novel script oriented vertically. First, the experimenter read the text to the child while tracing it with a finger either from top to bottom (half of the children) or from bottom to top (another half). Afterwards, the child completed three tasks: pretend reading (indicating the direction of the text), writing (copying a short text line), and visual search (finding a target letter among distractors). The results showed that the direction of reading to which the child was exposed influenced directional performance in all three tasks.

We conclude that tracing text while reading may be one of the ways in which cultural knowledge about script directionality is transmitted to children before they are explicitly taught to read and write at school.