Phonics & Letter Learning
Do Pictures Actually Help Children Learn to Read?
See what the research reveals about pictures beside letters versus pictures built directly into them.
Yes, but not simply because a picture is present. It depends on where the picture is. Pictures help most when they become part of the letter itself.
The bigger picture
More than a clever illustration.
Embedded picture mnemonics sit on top of a much older idea. Dual Coding Theory, developed by cognitive psychologist Allan Paivio more than 50 years ago, holds that we remember something better when it is stored in two ways at once, as a word and as an image. Each one gives the brain another route back to it.
But simply adding a picture is not enough. The picture and the letter have to be genuinely connected. With a picture sitting beside a letter, a child still has to look at the letter, shift to the picture, recall the picture's name, and tie that sound back to the letter. An embedded mnemonic removes those extra steps because the picture is already organized around the letter's shape.
Researchers began testing that specific difference directly in the 1980s. Taken together, the method is grounded in more than 50 years of cognitive science and more than 40 years of direct research on pictorial letter mnemonics.
The featured study
The clearest head-to-head test.
Adina Shmidman and Linnea Ehri taught 36 English-speaking preschoolers ten unfamiliar Hebrew letter-sound relations in two ways: with the picture embedded in the letter’s shape and with the same picture drawn so it did not resemble the letter (2010). Everything else about the instruction was identical.
The embedded letters were mastered in fewer trials, confused with other letters less often, and remembered better one week later. Most importantly, the effect did not stop at letter recognition. The embedded letters also produced stronger performance when children used them to read and spell new words. The mnemonic did not just help children name the letter. It strengthened the sound-symbol link that supports real reading.
The evidence, in charts
One clear pattern, across every study.
Independent studies have tested embedded picture mnemonics with English, Hebrew, and Turkish learners. In both labs and real classrooms, pictures built into letters worked better than pictures placed beside them.
Faster to recognize
At the end of 18 weeks, first graders taught with embedded picture mnemonics completed a letter-sound recognition task in more than 40% less time than children receiving standard classroom instruction (Kalender, 2026).
Numbers show the average time required to complete a 20-item letter-sound matching task. Less time indicates faster recognition.
Clearer to tell apart
Children taught with embedded picture mnemonics were less likely to mix up look-alike letters. In the study’s error analysis, one especially confusable letter was mistaken for its similar-looking neighbors far less often when the picture was built into the letter than when it sat beside it (Shmidman & Ehri, 2010).
Embedded picture mnemonic
picture inside the letter
Picture beside the letter
letter and picture kept separate
Numbers show how often one target Hebrew letter was confused with similar-looking letters. Lower is better.
Easier to learn
Same seven weeks. Same 32 lessons. Same 13 letter sounds.
Both groups practiced identifying beginning sounds, writing letters, and reviewing previously taught sounds each week. Even with the teaching time and learning goals closely matched, children receiving integrated-mnemonic instruction gained nearly twice as many letter sounds (Roberts & Sadler, 2019).
Letter sounds learned in the same seven weeks, out of 13. Higher is better.
Easier to remember
A full week after the lessons ended, children still recalled the embedded letters more than twice as well as plain ones (Ehri, Deffner & Wilce, 1984).
Each dot = one of five sounds still recalled a week later.
The surprising part
It transfers to blending.
After seven weeks, children taught with integrated picture mnemonics performed better on oral blending, even though the skill was never directly taught. They were asked to combine two to five separately spoken sounds into a whole word. By the end, the integrated-mnemonic group averaged 6.3 out of 10, compared with 4.1 out of 10 for the plain-letter group. Far fewer children also remained at a very low level: only 5% scored two or fewer, compared with 33% of children in the plain-letter group (Roberts & Sadler, 2019).
Phoneme blending score out of 10. Higher is better.
The honest version
What the research does, and doesn't, tell us.
Embedded picture mnemonics are not a complete reading program. Children still need explicit instruction and practice in phonemic awareness, blending, decoding, spelling, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension.
What they do is solve one narrower but important problem: helping an abstract symbol become firmly connected to a speech sound in memory. The direct research base is still relatively small, and several studies used modest samples or specific groups of children, so larger, longer-term research would strengthen the conclusions.
Still, studies conducted over more than four decades, across different languages and classrooms, point in the same direction: pictures help most when they do more than decorate the page. When the picture follows the letter's shape and carries its sound, the first steps of phonics become faster, clearer, and easier to remember.
References
- Paivio, A. (1971). Imagery and Verbal Processes. Holt, Rinehart & Winston.
- Ehri, L. C., Deffner, N. D., & Wilce, L. S. (1984). Pictorial mnemonics for phonics. Journal of Educational Psychology, 76(5), 880–893.
- Shmidman, A., & Ehri, L. C. (2010). Embedded picture mnemonics to learn letters. Scientific Studies of Reading, 14(2), 159–182.
- Ehri, L. C. (2014). Orthographic mapping in the acquisition of sight word reading, spelling memory, and vocabulary learning. Scientific Studies of Reading, 18(1), 5–21.
- Roberts, T. A., & Sadler, C. D. (2019). Letter sound characters and imaginary narratives: Can they enhance motivation and letter sound learning? Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 46, 97–111.
- Kalender, B. (2026). Enhancing letter recognition in first graders with embedded picture mnemonics. Frontiers in Psychology, 17, 1726843.
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