The timing and mechanisms of children's use of morphological information in spelling: A review of evidence from English and French

Which skills underlie French-speaking children's lexical spelling acquisition in elementary school? Insight from a cross-sectional exploratory network study from Grade 1 to Grade 5

Learning to spell in an inconsistent orthographic system is a true challenge for primary school children. Previous empirical studies have highlighted three main skills involved in this learning process: phonological skills, morphological skills, and children's sensitivity to graphotactic regularities. However, the literature shows contradictions in the exact nature of the contribution of each skill at different stages of the learning process. So, the aim of our study was to test the contribution of this set of skills in the acquisition of lexical spelling as a function of children's grade level. For this purpose, we assessed these dimensions in a cross-sectional sample of 1101 French-speaking children from Grade 1 to Grade 5. The analyses were conducted using data-driven exploratory network modeling. The results showed (a) a predominant role of phonological skills at the beginning of learning, which tends to decrease with advancing schooling; (b) an increasing contribution of morphological skills from Grade 1 to Grade 5 with a drop in Grade 4, which is the only contribution that continues to increase in Grade 5; and (c) a contribution of the sensitivity to graphotactic regularities that tends to be stable until Grade 4 before decreasing in Grade 5. Our findings show the importance of all three skills in a dynamic process in learning to spell. The implications of these results are discussed in light of the integration of multiple patterns model of learning to spell.

Derivational Morphology Training in French-Speaking, 9- to 14- Year-Old Children and Adolescents With Developmental Dyslexia: Does it Improve Morphological Awaraness, Reading and Spelling Outcome Measures?

Children with developmental dyslexia (DD) display partially preserved morphology skills which they rely upon for reading and spelling. Therefore, we conducted explicit and intensive training of derivational morphology in individuals with DD, ages 9 to 14 years, in order to assess its effect on: morphological awareness, reading (speed and accuracy), and spelling. Our pre-posttest design included a group trained in derivational morphology and a group of children who continued their business-as-usual rehabilitation program with their speech-language therapist. Results showed effects on morphological awareness and on the spelling of complex words, with a large between-group effect size for trained items and a large to moderate effect size for untrained items. All these gains tended to be maintained over time on the delayed posttest, 2 months later. For reading, the results were more contrasted, with large between-group effect sizes for accuracy and speed for trained items, reducing to a small effect for accuracy on the delayed posttest. For untrained items, small effects were observed on accuracy (at both posttests) but not on speed. These results are very promising and argue in favor of using derivational morphology as a medium to improve literacy skills in French-speaking children and adolescents with DD.

Do You Use Love to Make it Lovely? The Role of Meaning Overlap across Morphological Relatives in the Development of Morphological Representations

We examined whether and how the degree of meaning overlap between morphologically related words influences sentence plausibility judgment in children. In two separate studies with kindergarten and second-graders, English-speaking and French-speaking children judged the plausibility of sentences that included two paired target words. Some of these word pairs were morphologically related, across three conditions with differing levels of meaning overlap: low (wait-waiter), moderate (fold-folder) and high (farm-farmer). In another two conditions, word pairs were related only by phonology (rock-rocket) or semantics (car-automobile). Children in both ages and languages demonstrated higher plausibility scores as meaning overlap increased between morphologically related words. Further, kindergarten children rated sentences that included word pairs with phonological overlap as more plausible than second-grade children, while second-grade children rated those with high meaning overlap as more plausible than kindergarten children. We interpret these findings in light of current models of morphological development.

Morphology as an aid in orthographic learning of new words: The influence of inflected and derived forms in spelling acquisition

Prior studies have shown that children are sensitive to the principle of root consistency, whereby root morphemes retain their spelling across related words. The current study used an implicit learning situation to examine, in 56 third grade and 56 fifth grade French-speaking children, whether orthographic learning of new morphologically simple words ending in a silent letter benefited from morphological relatedness with inflected and derived forms. In the morphological condition, the new words (e.g.,clirot with a final silentt) appeared in short stories along with a morphologically related form in which the silent letter of the root was pronounced, justifying the presence of the silent letter in the root word. The morphologically complex form was an inflectional form (e.g.,clirote) for half of the children and was a derived form (e.g.,clirotage) for the other half. In the nonmorphological condition, the new words were not accompanied by morphologically related forms. After children had read the stories, their orthographic learning was assessed by asking the children to choose the correct spelling of each nonword from among three phonologically plausible alternatives (e.g.,clirot,cliros, cliro). Children chose correct spellings more often in the morphological condition than in the nonmorphological condition for both types of morphology in Grade 5 but only for inflectional morphology in Grade 3. Our findings indicate that, in learning new spellings, French children seem to rely on the root consistency principle earlier for inflectional morphology than for derivational morphology. Possible reasons for this developmental delay in mastering derivational morphology are discussed.

Spelling acquisition in a consistent orthography: The facilitatory effect of syllable frequency in novice spellers

This study investigates the effects of two sublexical variables, syllable frequency, and word length, in the spelling acquisition of novice spellers dealing with a transparent orthography, such as Italian. Two groups of 1 st-grade Italian children were tested respectively after 4 and 8 months of schooling, with a spelling-to-dictation task of single words created ad hoc by manipulating syllable frequency orthogonally (high vs low frequency of the first syllable) and length (short vs long words). The results show that after only four months of schooling, children could offset their difficulty in writing long words by taking advantage of the high frequency of the initial syllable. However, the regularity of Italian spelling makes it easy to capture fine-sized phoneme-to-grapheme units, rendering the syllable effect no longer detectable in more schooled children.

Spelling Errors in French Elementary School Students: A Linguistic Analysis

PURPOSE

This study offers the first description of misspellings across elementary school using the Phonological, Orthographic and Morphological Assessment of Spelling (POMAS), a linguistic framework based on Triple Word Form theory, adapted for French (POMAS-FR). It aims to test the "universality" of POMAS and its suitability to track development in French spelling.

METHOD

One hundred ninety-four typically developing French children (Grades 1-5) produced a written narrative and words-to-dictation. These were analyzed for productivity and accuracy. Misspellings were then analyzed using POMAS-FR.

RESULTS

Productivity and accuracy were better in the later grades. POMAS-FR provided a novel framework for tracking error types in our French sample. The data showed a linear trend for text production, whereby the proportion of phonological errors decreased rapidly in the early grades, while orthographic errors decreased and morphological errors increased throughout elementary school. Words-to-dictation showed a more stable pattern, with a steady decrease in phonological errors, and a stable proportion of orthographic and morphological errors. The specific error types found within each linguistic category are described for both tasks.

CONCLUSIONS

The POMAS-FR allowed for the characterization of linguistic knowledge involved in learning to spell French across elementary school. Interplays between different types of linguistic knowledge were evident at all grades. In comparison with other writing systems, French text spelling competence relied heavily on morphological knowledge. These results suggest POMAS may be applied to other orthographic systems. It also highlights the importance of task and word selection for the qualitative evaluation of spelling.

SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL

https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.20520774.

Distinguishing Syntactic Markers From Morphological Markers. A Cross-Linguistic Comparison

This brief review summarizes findings about syntactic markers, i.e., graphemic elements that indicate syntactic relations, such as inflection morphemes. Current spelling models subsume inflection with derivation and stem alternations under "morphological spellings." They hence consider inflection only in relation to the orthographic word. This paper argues that syntactic markers are a specific category as they are part of the orthographic word but also systematically tied to the presence of syntactic features above the word level. Syntactic spelling refers thus not only to the correct spelling of a syntactic marker but to its correct application within a given syntactical context. In syntactic reading, (proof)readers must notice the marker and interpret it correctly to understand the sentence. Syntactic spelling and reading have hence been found to be highly demanding in many languages. Syntactic information is not decisive for sentence understanding in many cases, since the information can be deduced from the context. In order to focus the definition of syntactic markers, this paper restricts them to those graphemic elements that convey syntactical but no lexical features and are further unrelated to phonology. The paper concludes that syntactic markers and spelling should be distinguished from morphological spelling. Examples are given for English, French, Dutch, and German.

The Spelling Errors of French and English Children With Developmental Language Disorder at the End of Primary School

Children with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) often struggle learning to spell. However, it is still unclear where their spelling difficulties lie, and whether they reflect on-going difficulties with specific linguistic domains. It is also unclear whether the spelling profiles of these children vary in different orthographies. The present study compares the spelling profiles of monolingual children with DLD in France and England at the end of primary school. By contrasting these cohorts, we explored the linguistic constraints that affect spelling, beyond phono-graphemic transparency, in two opaque orthographies. Seventeen French and 17 English children with DLD were compared to typically developing children matched for age or spelling level. Participants wrote a 5 min sample of free writing and spelled 12 controlled dictated words. Spelling errors were analyzed to capture areas of difficulty in each language, in the phonological, morphological, orthographic and semantic domains. Overall, the nature of the errors produced by children with DLD is representative of their spelling level in both languages. However, areas of difficulty vary with the language and task, with more morphological errors in French than in English across both tasks and more orthographic errors in English than in French dictated words. The error types produced by children with DLD also differed in the two languages: segmentation and contraction errors were found in French, whilst morphological ending errors were found in English. It is hypothesized that these differences reflect the phonological salience of the units misspelled in both languages. The present study also provides a detailed breakdown of the spelling errors found in both languages for children with DLD and typical peers aged 5–11.

Derivational Morphology Bridges Phonology and Orthography: Insights Into the Development of Word-Specific Spellings by Superior, Average, and Poor Spellers

Purpose Morphology, which is a bridge between phonology and orthography, plays an important role in the development of word-specific spellings. This study, which employed longitudinal sampling of typically developing students in Grades 3, 4, and 5, explored how the misspellings of words with derivational suffixes shed light on the interplay of phonological, orthographic, and morphological (POM) linguistic features as students learn to integrate POM features appropriately to generate correct spellings. Method Sixty typically developing Grade 3 students were tested using the Spelling subtest from the Wechsler Individual Achievement Test-Second Edition (Wechsler, 2001) and were divided into superior, average, and poor spellers. Students' spelling skill was then assessed using the Wechsler Individual Achievement Test-Second Edition annually for another 2 years. Misspelled derivations from these three testing sessions were analyzed for linguistic feature errors and error complexity/severity. Differences in the integration of POM features across spelling ability levels at Grades 3-5 were analyzed with Kruskal-Wallis analyses of variance. Results Longitudinal results demonstrated POM integration for the development of word-specific spellings involving derivational morphology was in its initial stages over Grades 3-5 and was influenced by spelling ability level. Information from a qualitative analysis revealed considerable variability in how students applied their POM knowledge to spell complex derivations. Conclusions Word-specific spellings draw on multiple linguistic codes-P, O, and M-and their interconnections. It involves more than an understanding of orthographic rules. Rather, accurate spelling develops through an increased understanding of the phoneme-grapheme relationships as facilitated by the identification of word parts (base + or - affixes) in written language. Educational and clinical implications are discussed.

Non-phonological Strategies in Spelling Development

This paper investigated the role that types of knowledge beyond phonology have on spelling development, such as knowledge of morpheme-to-grapheme mappings, of orthographic patterns, and of word-specific orthographic patterns. It is based on the modern view that children do not learn spelling in discrete stages but, rather, they apply different types of strategies from early on. The goals of the paper were threefold: (1) to determine the relative difficulty of different types of non-phonological spelling strategies, (2) to examine the contribution of non-phonological strategies (specifically, morphological, morphophonological, orthographic, and lexical) to conventional spelling scores, and (3) to determine the role of children's educational level and population type (first- vs. second-language learners) on spelling strategy use. A large sample of 982 children (497 boys), speakers of Catalan (a Romance language similar to Spanish but with a less consistent orthography), participated in the study. They were administered a bespoke dictation task aimed to test their conventional and phonographic accuracy skill, as well as to determine their ability to use different types of non-phonological strategies for the spelling of ambiguous phonemes. Data were analyzed with a series of multigroup, multilevel SEMs. Results showed that (1) children across groups found morphological and lexical strategies harder to apply than orthographic and morphophonological strategies and (2) all types of non-phonological strategies contributed greatly to spelling accuracy scores, even after controlling for children's phonographic skills. Efficient strategy use increased as a function of schooling level, while second-language learners had a worse performance throughout, but no group showed a specific pattern of results. In conclusion, the paper offers substantial evidence that non-phonological strategies are paramount to learning to spell at least during the early and intermediate elementary school years. It is suggested that the teaching of writing should therefore be multidimensional in nature and target particularly the strategies with which children struggle the most: knowledge of morpho-graphemic mappings and word-specific lexical representations. Theoretical implications are also discussed.

What Do Spelling Errors Tell Us about Deaf Learners of French?

For deaf students, spelling acquisition is a considerable challenge, especially because the spelling code is based on an oral language to which most of them have limited access. Most studies conducted with deaf students have reported that they lag behind their hearing peers. However, few studies have used a fine-grained error classification grid. The use of such a grid makes it possible to draw a precise portrait of writers' orthographic knowledge. The purpose of this study was to describe the spelling skills of 19 deaf students (Mage = 10.9 years) and to compare their errors with those of 20 hearing students of the same age and 17 younger hearing students at the same reading level. The results indicate that deaf students are not quantitatively different from hearing students but that their errors are qualitatively different from those of hearing students.

The Development of Morphological Knowledge and Spelling in French

The Frenchorthographic system is particularly difficult to learn because nearly 30% of words in the lexicon end with a silent letter. One metalinguistic skill that has been identified to facilitate spelling acquisition in French is morphological knowledge. This cross-sectional study investigated the construct of morphological knowledge, its development and its role in building accurate orthographic representations in a sample of francophone elementary students. We proposed that morphological knowledge, a superordinate process, encompasses children's implicit use of morphemes in everyday language and their conscious, targeted manipulation of morphemes. In the present study, we assessed children's recognition of morphogrammes, the silent-letter endings (SLEs) of root words that become pronounced in suffixed forms (e.g., the silent t in chant/ʃã/ [song] → chanteur /ʃãtœʀ/ [singer]). When spelling root words, children may mark morphogrammes by recalling morphologically related words in which the morphogramme is not silent - thus, morphological knowledge was hypothesized to positively predict morphogramme spelling. One hundred and twenty-three children in grades 1-3 were assessed on four measures of morphological knowledge, two measures of spelling recognition and a dictation of pseudowords to explore their inclusion of silent-letter endings in novel words. As expected, morphological tasks that required explicit morphological manipulations were harder than implicit ones. Moreover, first graders struggled to complete explicit morphological tasks, while third graders were near ceiling performance on implicit tasks. Nevertheless, the four tasks converged on a single morphological knowledge construct as confirmed by a factor analysis. Importantly, morphological knowledge explained unique variance in children's accurate representation of silent-letter endings after controlling for grade, reading for pleasure and general orthographic recognition of words. Finally, children rarely used silent-letter endings when spelling pseudowords; however, when they did, they displayed sensitivity to the appropriate phonological context for the letter used. The findings are in accord with theoretical models suggesting that the representations of letters without phonological value are difficult to construct and may remain fuzzy.

Spelling performance on the web and in the lab

Several dictionary websites are available on the web to access semantic, synonymous, or spelling information about a given word. During nine years, we systematically recorded all the entered letter sequences from a French web dictionary. A total of 200 million orthographic forms were obtained allowing us to create a large-scale database of spelling errors that could inform psychological theories about spelling processes. To check the reliability of this big data methodology, we selected from this database a sample of 100 frequently misspelled words. A group of 100 French university students had to perform a spelling-to-dictation test on this list of words. The results showed a strong correlation between the two data sets on the frequencies of produced spellings (r = 0.82). Although the distributions of spelling errors were relatively consistent across the two databases, the proportion of correct responses revealed significant differences. Regression analyses allowed us to generate possible explanations for these differences in terms of task-dependent factors. We argue that comparing the results of these large-scale databases with those of standard and controlled experimental paradigms is certainly a good way to determine the conditions under which this big data methodology can be adequately used for informing psychological theories.

Early Identification of Dyslexia: Understanding the Issues

Purpose

The purpose of this tutorial is to provide an overview of the benefits and challenges associated with the early identification of dyslexia.

Method

The literature on the early identification of dyslexia is reviewed. Theoretical arguments and research evidence are summarized. An overview of response to intervention as a method of early identification is provided, and the benefits and challenges associated with it are discussed. Finally, the role of speech-language pathologists in the early identification process is addressed.

Conclusions

Early identification of dyslexia is crucial to ensure that children are able to maximize their educational potential, and speech-language pathologists are well placed to play a role in this process. However, early identification alone is not sufficient—difficulties with reading may persist or become apparent later in schooling. Therefore, continuing progress monitoring and access to suitable intervention programs are essential.

Morpheme-Based Reading and Writing in Spanish Children with Dyslexia

It has been well documented that morphemic structure (roots and affixes) have an impact in reading, but effects seem to depend on the reading experience of readers and lexical characteristics of the stimuli. Specifically, it has been reported that morphemes constitute reading units for developing readers and children with dyslexia when they encounter a new word. In addition, recent studies have stated that the effect of morphology is also present in spelling, as morphological information facilitates spelling accuracy and influences handwriting times. The goal of this study was to investigate the role of morphology in reading and spelling fluency in Spanish children with dyslexia. For that purpose, a group of 24 children with dyslexia was compared with an age-matched group of 24 children without reading disabilities in performing a word naming task and a spelling-to-dictation task of isolated words. Morphological condition (high frequency base, low frequency base, simple) and lexicality (words vs. pseudowords) were manipulated. We considered, for the naming task, reading latencies, reading durations, reading critical segment (three first phonemes) durations and naming accuracy; and, for the spelling task, written latencies, writing durations for the whole word, writing critical segment (three first letters) durations and spelling accuracy. Results showed that Spanish children (with and without dyslexia) benefit from a high frequency base to initiate reading and writing responses, showing that they are familiar with the letter chunks that constitute a morpheme. In addition, base frequency impacts reading critical segment duration only for children with dyslexia, but for both groups in writing. In summary, children with dyslexia benefit from a high frequency base to read and spell unfamiliar stimuli.

Morphology and Spelling in French: A Comparison of At-Risk Readers and Typically Developing Children

We present two studies that examine the role of morphology in French spelling. In Study 1, we examined the concurrent and longitudinal relationships between inflectional awareness and derivational awareness and spelling within a sample of 77 children in a French immersion programme in Canada. Children completed a non-verbal reasoning measure and French measures of phonological awareness, word reading, vocabulary, morphological awareness, and spelling. Results showed that inflectional morphological awareness in Grade 3 was a predictor of spelling in the same grade. Inflectional awareness in Grade 2 predicted Grade 3 spelling, controlling for reading-related skills and spelling at Grade 2. These analyses support the role of inflectional morphological awareness in the development of spelling of children of a range of reading and spelling abilities. In contrast, derivational awareness in Grades 2 and 3 did not predict spelling concurrently in both grades respectively. Study 2 contrasted the morphological errors in the spellings of six children at risk for reading difficulties with those of six chronological age-matched and six reading level-matched children. Analyses showed that at-risk children exhibited more difficulties with spelling roots and suffixes in words as compared with their age-matched peers, although they performed similarly to children matched on reading level. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Spelling Errors in French-speaking Children with Dyslexia: Phonology May Not Provide the Best Evidence

For children with dyslexia, learning to write constitutes a great challenge. There has been consensus that the explanation for these learners' delay is related to a phonological deficit. Results from studies designed to describe dyslexic children's spelling errors are not always as clear concerning the role of phonological processes as those found in reading studies. In irregular languages like French, spelling abilities involve other processes than phonological processes. The main goal of this study was to describe the relative contribution of these other processes in dyslexic children's spelling ability. In total, 32 francophone dyslexic children with a mean age of 11.4 years were compared with 24 reading-age matched controls (RA) and 24 chronological-age matched controls (CA). All had to write a text that was analysed at the graphemic level. All errors were classified as either phonological, morphological, visual-orthographic or lexical. Results indicated that dyslexic children's spelling ability lagged behind not only that of the CA group but also of the RA group. Because the majority of errors, in all groups, could not be explained by inefficiency of phonological processing, the importance of visual knowledge/processes will be discussed as a complementary explanation of dyslexic children's delay in writing. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

L2 Spelling Errors in Italian Children with Dyslexia

The present study aimed to investigate L2 spelling skills in Italian children by administering an English word dictation task to 13 children with dyslexia (CD), 13 control children (comparable in age, gender, schooling and IQ) and a group of 10 children with an English learning difficulty, but no L1 learning disorder. Patterns of difficulties were examined for accuracy and type of errors, in spelling dictated short and long words (i.e. disyllables and three syllables). Notably, CD were poor in spelling English words. Furthermore, their errors were mainly related with phonological representation of words, as they made more 'phonologically' implausible errors than controls. In addition, CD errors were more frequent for short than long words. Conversely, the three groups did not differ in the number of plausible ('non-phonological') errors, that is, words that were incorrectly written, but whose reading could correspond to the dictated word via either Italian or English rules. Error analysis also showed syllable position differences in the spelling patterns of CD, children with and English learning difficulty and control children. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Executive Functions Differentially Contribute to Fourth Graders’ Mathematics, Reading, and Spelling Skills

Executive functions (EFs; working memory [WM], inhibition, and shifting) are widely known to play a critical role in school achievement. Among these EFs, WM appears to be implicated in numeracy and literacy. The contribution of inhibition and shifting to school achievement is less clear. Given the existing divergences in the literature and the importance of the interindividual differences in these domains, it seems important to assess EFs and scholastic skills in the same elementary school children. However, studies providing such an assessment are scarce. We explored whether EFs differentially contribute to mathematics, reading, and spelling skills in fourth-grade children (N = 71). The results revealed that (a) WM and inhibition accounted for unique variance in mathematics skills, (b) WM and shifting accounted for unique variance in reading skills, and (c) only shifting accounted for unique variance in spelling skills. The implications of these findings for children and teachers are discussed.

The effect of morphology on spelling and reading accuracy: a study on Italian children

In opaque orthographies knowledge of morphological information helps in achieving reading and spelling accuracy. In transparent orthographies with regular print-to-sound correspondences, such as Italian, the mappings of orthography onto phonology and phonology onto orthography are in principle sufficient to read and spell most words. The present study aimed to investigate the role of morphology in the reading and spelling accuracy of Italian children as a function of school experience to determine whether morphological facilitation was present in children learning a transparent orthography. The reading and spelling performances of 15 third-grade and 15 fifth-grade typically developing children were analyzed. Children read aloud and spelled both low-frequency words and pseudowords. Low-frequency words were manipulated for the presence of morphological structure (morphemic words vs. non-derived words). Morphemic words could also vary for the frequency (high vs. low) of roots and suffixes. Pseudo-words were made up of either a real root and a real derivational suffix in a combination that does not exist in the Italian language or had no morphological constituents. Results showed that, in Italian, morphological information is a useful resource for both reading and spelling. Typically developing children benefitted from the presence of morphological structure when they read and spelled pseudowords; however, in processing low-frequency words, morphology facilitated reading but not spelling. These findings are discussed in terms of morpho-lexical access and successful cooperation between lexical and sublexical processes in reading and spelling.

The representation of roots in the spelling of children with specific language impairment

Children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI) have demonstrated general spelling and writing difficulties. We investigated the sensitivity of children with SLI to the consistent spelling of root morphemes, a feature to which young typically developing children demonstrate sensitivity. We asked children with SLI and two groups of typically developing children (n = 17 in each group) to spell the same letter-sound sequence (e.g., win) as a root, and as a component of inflected, derived, and control words (e.g., win, wins, winner, wink). Children with SLI and spelling-age-matched children (mean age of 9 and 7 years, respectively) were more accurate and more consistent in spelling the initial sections of the inflected and derived words than of the control words, a pattern that suggests sensitivity to the representation of roots in spelling. The absence of a group-level interaction suggests comparable sensitivity in the two groups. Our results suggest that elementary-school-aged children with SLI are sensitive to the consistent spelling of roots, at least to the extent predicted by their general spelling abilities.

Learning to spell from reading: general knowledge about spelling patterns influences memory for specific words

Adults often learn to spell words during the course of reading for meaning, without intending to do so. We used an incidental learning task in order to study this process. Spellings that contained double n, r and t which are common doublets in French, were learned more readily by French university students than spellings that contained less common but still legal doublets. When recalling or recognizing the latter, the students sometimes made transposition errors, doubling a consonant that often doubles in French rather than the consonant that was originally doubled (e.g., tiddunar recalled as tidunnar). The results, found in three experiments using different nonwords and different types of instructions, show that people use general knowledge about the graphotactic patterns of their writing system together with word-specific knowledge to reconstruct spellings that they learn from reading. These processes contribute to failures and successes in memory for spellings, as in other domains.

Lexical spelling in children and adolescents with specific language impairment: variations with the writing situation

The goal of this study was to compare the lexical spelling performance of children and adolescents with specific language impairment (SLI) in two contrasting writing situations: a dictation of isolated words (a classic evaluative situation) and a narrative of a personal event (a communicative situation). Twenty-four children with SLI and 48 typically developing children participated in the study, split into two age groups: 7-11 and 12-18 years of age. Although participants with SLI made more spelling errors per word than typically developing participants of the same chronological age, there was a smaller difference between the two groups in the narratives than in the dictations. Two of the findings are particularly noteworthy: (1) Between 12 and 18 years of age, in communicative narration, the number of spelling errors of the SLI group was not different from that of the typically developing group. (2) In communicative narration, the participants with SLI did not make specific spelling errors (phonologically unacceptable), contrary to what was shown in the dictation. From an educational perspective or that of a remediation program, it must be stressed that the communicative narration provides children-and especially adolescents-with SLI an opportunity to demonstrate their improved lexical spelling abilities. Furthermore, the results encourage long-term lexical spelling education, as adolescents with SLI continue to show improvement between 12 and 18 years of age.

Agreeing to disagree: deaf and hearing children's awareness of subject-verb number agreement

This study investigated deaf adolescents' implicit and explicit awareness of subject-verb number agreement. In Experiment 1, a self-paced reading task, the reading times of deaf and hearing children (matched for reading and chronological age, mean=8;3 and 13;10 years) increased when sentences contained disagreeing subject-verb number markers. However, deaf adolescents' slowing occurred later in the sentence than it did in both groups of hearing children. The same deaf adolescents were unable to detect and correct subject-verb agreement errors in Experiment 2, whereas both groups of hearing children performed well on this task. Thus, deaf adolescents demonstrated implicit awareness of agreement in the absence of explicit knowledge. Moreover, this nascent awareness was below that expected on the basis of their (substantially delayed) reading ability. Therefore, grammatical difficulties could be a significant impediment to deaf children's literacy. Future research should examine whether this is a result of late or incomplete learning of English, bilingualism, or another factor.

Deaf and hearing children's plural noun spelling

The present study examines deaf and hearing children's spelling of plural nouns. Severe literacy impairments are well documented in the deaf, which are believed to be a consequence of phonological awareness limitations. Fifty deaf (mean chronological age 13;10 years, mean reading age 7;5 years) and 50 reading-age-matched hearing children produced spellings of regular, semiregular, and irregular plural nouns in Experiment 1 and nonword plurals in Experiment 2. Deaf children performed reading-age appropriately on rule-based (regular and semiregular) plurals but were significantly less accurate at spelling irregular plurals. Spelling of plural nonwords and spelling error analyses revealed clear evidence for use of morphology. Deaf children used morphological generalization to a greater degree than their reading-age-matched hearing counterparts. Also, hearing children combined use of phonology and morphology to guide spelling, whereas deaf children appeared to use morphology without phonological mediation. Therefore, use of morphology in spelling can be independent of phonology and is available to the deaf despite limited experience with spoken language. Indeed, deaf children appear to be learning about morphology from the orthography. Education on more complex morphological generalization and exceptions may be highly beneficial not only for the deaf but also for other populations with phonological awareness limitations.

Morphological processing during visual word recognition in developing readers: Evidence from masked priming

Masked priming studies with adult readers have provided evidence for a form-based morpho-orthographic segmentation mechanism that “blindly” decomposes any word with the appearance of morphological complexity. The present studies investigated whether evidence for structural morphological decomposition can be obtained with developing readers. We used a masked primed lexical decision design first adopted by Rastle, Davis, and New (2004), comparing truly suffixed ( golden–GOLD) and pseudosuffixed ( mother–MOTH) prime–target pairs with nonsuffixed controls ( spinach–SPIN). Experiment 1 tested adult readers, showing that priming from both pseudo- and truly suffixed primes could be obtained using our own set of high-frequency word materials. Experiment 2 assessed a group of Year 3 and Year 5 children, but priming only occurred when prime and target shared a true morphological relationship, and not when the relationship was pseudomorphological. This pattern of results indicates that morpho-orthographic decomposition mechanisms do not become automatized until a relatively late stage in reading development.

Annual research review: the nature and classification of reading disorders--a commentary on proposals for DSM-5

This article reviews our understanding of reading disorders in children and relates it to current proposals for their classification in DSM-5. There are two different, commonly occurring, forms of reading disorder in children which arise from different underlying language difficulties. Dyslexia (as defined in DSM-5), or decoding difficulty, refers to children who have difficulty in mastering the relationships between the spelling patterns of words and their pronunciations. These children typically read aloud inaccurately and slowly, and experience additional problems with spelling. Dyslexia appears to arise principally from a weakness in phonological (speech sound) skills, and there is good evidence that it can be ameliorated by systematic phonic teaching combined with phonological awareness training. The other major form of reading difficulty is reading comprehension impairment. These children read aloud accurately and fluently, but have difficulty understanding what they have read. Reading comprehension impairment appears to arise from weaknesses in a range of oral language skills including poor vocabulary knowledge, weak grammatical skills and difficulties in oral language comprehension. We suggest that the omission of reading comprehension impairment from DSM-5 is a serious one that should be remedied. Both dyslexia and reading comprehension impairment are dimensional in nature, and show strong continuities with other disorders of language. We argue that recognizing the continuities between reading and language disorders has important implications for assessment and treatment, and we note that the high rates of comorbidity between reading disorders and other seemingly disparate disorders (including ADHD and motor disorders) raises important challenges for understanding these disorders.

When cues collide: children's sensitivity to letter- and meaning-patterns in spelling words in English

In many learning situations, we need to determine to which cues to attend, particularly in cases when these cues conflict. These conflicts appear often in English orthography. In two experiments, we asked children to spell two-syllable words that varied on two dimensions: morphological and orthographic structure. In one set of these words, the two sources of information conflicted. Results of Experiment 1 suggest that seven- to nine-year-old children are sensitive to both orthographic and morphological dimensions of words, and that this dual sensitivity sometimes leads to correct spelling and sometimes to incorrect spelling. Results of Experiment 2 suggest that orthographic information dominates young (six-year-old) children's spelling, at least in a case when there is a strong orthographic regularity. Taken together, these experiments suggest that children are sensitive to the multiple dimensions of regularity in English orthography and that this sensitivity can lead to mistakes.

Mastering inflectional suffixes: a longitudinal study of beginning writers' spellings*

This study tracked the order in which ten beginning spellers (M age=5 ; 05; SD=0·21 years) mastered the correct spellings of common inflectional suffixes in English. Spellings from children's journals from kindergarten and grade 1 were coded. An inflectional suffix was judged to be mastered when children spelled it accurately in 90 percent of the contexts in which it was grammatically required, a criterion used to study the order of acquisition of grammatical morphemes in oral language. The results indicated that the order in which children learned to spell inflectional suffixes correctly is similar to the order in which they learn to use them in oral language, before school age. Discrepancies between the order of mastery for inflectional suffixes in written and oral language are discussed in terms of English spelling conventions, which introduce variables into the spelling of inflected words that are not present in oral language.

The role of form and meaning in the processing of written morphology: A priming study in French developing readers

Three visual priming experiments using three different prime durations (60ms in Experiment 1, 250ms in Experiment 2, and 800ms in Experiment 3) were conducted to examine which properties of morphemes (form and/or meaning) drive developing readers' processing of written morphology. French third, fifth, and seventh graders and adults (the latter as a control group) performed lexical decision tasks in which targets were preceded by morphological (e.g., tablette-TABLE, "little table-table"), pseudoderived (e.g., baguette-BAGUE, "little stick-ring"), orthographic control (e.g., abricot-ABRI, "apricot-shelter"), and semantic control (e.g., Tulipe-FLEUR, "tulip-flower") primes. Across all groups, different patterns of priming were observed in both morphological and orthographic/semantic control conditions, suggesting that they all process morphemes as units when reading. In developing readers, the processing of written morphology is triggered by the form properties of morphemes, and their semantic properties are activated later in the time course of word recognition. In adults, patterns of priming were similar except that the activation of the form properties of morphemes decreased earlier in the time course of word recognition. Taken together, these findings indicate that French developing readers process both the form and meaning properties of morphemes when reading and support a progressive quantitative change in the development of morphological processing over the course of reading development.

Morphological constancy in spelling: a comparison of children with dyslexia and typically developing children

The spellings of many English words follow a principle of morphological constancy. For example, musician includes the c of music, even though the pronunciation of this letter changes. With other words, such as explanation and explain, the spellings of morphemes are not retained when affixes are added. We asked whether children with dyslexia use root morphemes to aid their spelling of morphologically complex words. If so, they should sometimes produce misspellings such as 'explaination' for explanation. Our results suggest that children with dyslexia adhere to the principle of morphological constancy to the same extent as typically developing younger children of the same spelling level. In this and other ways, the spellings of older dyslexic children are remarkably similar to those of typical younger children.