62 The Print Knowledge as a Predictor of Reading Acquisition in Mexican Preschoolers

Objective: Print Knowledge in children starts with recognizing and characterizing printed figures; it is a precursor of other skills like letter knowledge and phonological awareness. The goal was to assess print knowledge components and their predictive value in emerging literacy in a sample of Mexican preschoolers. Participants and Methods: 60 children (aged 4 to 6 years old; 50% boys and 50% girls) were tested with an analysis of the visual synthesis and the figure copy from the SNBP-MX and the Rey Complex Figure Test (children’s version). Results: Children with lower performance in the SNBP-MX cannot use visual information to perform correctly at the Rey Complex Figure. They have problems in the reproduction of the figure, and they do not respect the components of the Print Knowledge: 1) figure building characteristics (size, rotation, orientation) and function (relationship with the background and with other figures). Conclusions: Early visual perception skills impairments are related to the execution of elements from the Print Knowledge. Therefore, it is expected that children with low performance at visoperception and spatial tasks will have difficulties with early literacy. Since visual information is needed for the copy and learning of writing figures, print knowledge could be categorized as a predictor of the early word and letter recognition skills. We thank project PAPIIT IN308219 for sponsoring this research.