In order to study young children's awareness of interword space as a cueing convention and determine their ability to deal with language on an abstract level, 23 black kindergarten children who had been exposed to formal reading instruction were tested. In the first test children were asked to study cards on which a single word or groups of words were written. Each child was instructed to point out when the examiner pronounced either fewer or more words than listed on the card. The second test was a 15 item word reversal task in which subjects were required to reverse word pairs pronounced by the examiner. Results indicated that even after a year of formal reading instruction only a few children could demonstrate awareness of space as a cueing convention and that the ability to demonstrate this awareness was related to the ability to manipulate oral language. It can be concluded that children develop clarity about technical features of written language as they learn to read and that some level of cognitive maturity may facilitate the abstraction of these technical features. (Author/JF)