This study deals with the ability of the beginning reader to recognize the relationships between isolated letter sounds and the same sounds embedded in a word context. The subjects were 64 prekindergarten children attending six private preschools in the Los Angeles metropolitan area. The subjects were all Caucasian and spoke a standard English dialect. A learning set design encompassing 192 trials over eight days was employed. The following relevant factors were investigated: the presence of a redundant visual cue, the type of phoneme (stop vs. continuant), the phoneme position, and the phonemic contrast between the positive and negative exemplars. It was concluded from the results that the redundant visual cue improved performance considerably; when the cue was removed, however, performance fell to control group levels in the second week. Generally, continuants were superior to stops. The position and contrast factors interacted with phoneme type. Groups transferred within phoneme class were superior to those transferred between phoneme class. The results suggest that the vowel following the initial stop may be an important factor in recognition, but allophonic differences which occur in free variation in English with terminal stops are not important. (TS)