Distinguishing representation deficits and processing deficits in a case of acquired dysgraphia

The same acquired disorder of spelling may be due to deficits affecting lexical representations of word spelling or deficits affecting the mechanisms that process those representations. This study sought to distinguish these possibilities in a dysgraphic patient. The integrity of the patient's lexical orthographic representations was assessed by having him decide whether or not pairs of words presented auditorily rhymed. Although the patient was impaired on a variety of spelling tasks and with all types of stimulus material, he showed a normal effect of spelling on the rhyme task. Like normal subjects, he was faster at deciding that words rhymed when they were spelled similarly (e.g. tool-cool) than when they were spelled dissimilarly (e.g. rule-cool) and slower at deciding that words did not rhyme when they were spelled similarly (e.g. toad-broad) than when they were spelled dissimilarly (e.g. code-broad). Therefore, as the patient's lexical representations of word spelling seemed to be generally intact, his spelling problems were probably due to difficulty in processing those representations.     

Improving Migrant Students' Spelling of English and Spanish Words with Error Correction

We examined the effects of error correction on spelling accuracy of culturally and linguistically diverse students enrolled in summer Migrant Education. In an error correction strategy, students spelled a word, viewed a correct model, and corrected specific errors. In a traditional strategy, students wrote words three times each while viewing a correct model. Words were presented in Spanish or English. Results showed that students with and without learning disabilities, whose primary language was English, correctly spelled more English words in the error correction condition than the traditional. Students whose primary language was Spanish correctly spelled Spanish words equally well in both conditions, possibly because of the phonetic nature of the Spanish language.     

Linguistic semantic agraphia: A dissociation of the lexical spelling system from semantics

Two spelling systems have been described. The phonological system transcodes speech sounds to letters and is thought to be useful for spelling regular words and pronounceable nonwords. Although the second system, the lexical-semantic system, is thought to use visual word images and meaning to spell irregular words, it is not known if this system is dependent on semantic knowledge. We used a homophone spelling test to examine the lexical-semantic system in five patients. The patients were asked to spell individual homophones (doe or dough) using the context of a sentence. Semantically incorrect and correct homophones were spelled equally well, whether they were regular or irregular. These results demonstrate that an irregular word may be spelled without knowledge of the word's meaning. Therefore, the lexical system can be dissociated from semantic influence.     

An Analysis of the Relevance of Topographical Similarity on Positive Practice of Spelling Errors

Two studies were conducted assessing the relevance of having students perform exercises with words spelled incorrectly on weekly pretests. Both studies used a multi-element design in which baseline was followed by the alternation of relevant positive practice (RPP) and irrelevant positive practice (IPP). In RPP, students were required to perform a variety of exercises on words spelled incorrectly on the pretest. In IPP, for each word spelled incorrectly, students had to perform similar exercises on words which were not on the spelling list. In all condition students took a posttest at the end of the week. In both cases, RPP and IPP produced superior spelling score on weekly tests compared to baseline. There were, however, insignificant differences between RPP and IPP. The superior scores on the posttests as compared to the pretests indicate the possibility of an educational component to the practice exercises. Comments by the students and teachers indicated their preference for RPP over IPP. Nevertheless, the extensive duration of the practice exercises may limit their usefulness.     

An Evaluation of the Word Triad Method for Monitoring Spelling Progress

Although spelling skill progress has typically been studied within the context of students' responses to written story starters (Deno, Marsten, & Mirkin, 1982; Fuchs & Fuchs, 2011; Hosp, Hosp, & Howell, 2007; Shinn & Shinn, 2002), there has been little research conducted within a curriculum-based measurement framework that has studied spelling progress monitoring on a weekly basis throughout an entire school year. The authors evaluated spelling progress using word triads, defined as a group of 3 words (with the same number of letters) that have a similar phonetic or morphological structure. Successful spelling of word triads as the unit of analysis has the potential to be more useful diagnostically to teachers than successful spelling of single words as the unit of analysis. An alternating series of three 15-word spelling tests were administered weekly to 10 third- and fourth-grade classrooms in the same school district throughout the school year for 8 rounds (1 round = 3 weeks of different but phonetically and/or morphologically similar word lists). Results indicate steady progress throughout the school year in the correct spelling of word triads (despite teacher reporting of no explicit spelling instruction in classrooms using in the words employed in the study). Correlations between the number of correctly spelled word triads with standard scores from a group-administered communication arts test were significant and comparable to alternate spelling test scoring methods. The authors conclude with limitations of the study and implications for practitioners.     

Effects of Self-Correction on the Acquisition, Maintenance, and Generalization of the Written Spelling of Elementary School Children

We examined the effect of self-correction on the acquisition, maintenance, and generalization of written spelling of elementary school students attending an after-school clinic. Six students registered for remedial tutoring participated. During self-correction, students initially learned four proofreading marks and a procedure for using them that were subsequently applied as the students compared their spelling to a model. Results showed a functional effect between self-correction and improved student performance on target words. Using the self-correction procedure, the students spelled at least 98% of the target words accurately, maintained at least 85% of the correctly spelled words, and generalized at least 70% of the words at home, in context, and with word variations. Questionnaires administered to the students, their parents, and teachers indicated that students preferred self-correction. Parents noticed academic improvements in their child's spelling performance as well as positive changes in attitude toward school. Most teachers did not notice changes in spelling performance or attitude.     

Morphological knowledge as revealed in children's spelling accuracy and reports of spelling strategies

The goal of the current research was to assess whether children can make strategic use of morphological relations among words to spell. French-speaking children in Grade 4 spelled three word types: (a) phonological words that had regular phoneme-grapheme correspondences, (b) morphological words that had silent consonant endings for which a derivative revealed the silent ending, and (c) lexical words that had silent consonant endings for which no familiar derivative revealed the ending. Children were also asked to provide immediate retrospective reports of the strategies used to spell each word. Two experiments (Ns = 46 and 39) were conducted. As expected, children in Grade 4 spelled phonological words more accurately than they did words with silent consonant endings. In addition, children spelled morphological words more accurately than they did lexical words. Reports of using retrieval were associated with accurate performance across word types. Importantly, reports of using morphological strategies to spell morphological words were associated with a similar level of accuracy, as were reports of using retrieval. Even though children reported using a phonological strategy frequently across all word types, this strategy was associated with accurate performance only for spelling phonological words. Experiment 2 replicated the results of Experiment 1 with another set of stimuli and also showed that children's morphological awareness predicted their spelling accuracy for morphological words as well as the reported frequency of morphological strategy use. In sum, the findings revealed that most children showed evidence of adaptive strategy use.     

Case-Mixing Effects on Spelling Recognition: The Importance of Test Format

In a multiple-choice spelling recognition test, 56 university students were more accurate on more regular than irregular words, and on lower-case than mixed-case words, with the case mixing effect greater for irregular than regular words. In Experiment 2, the same words were presented singly in correct or incorrect spellings and distortion of word shape was achieved by case mixing (32 subjects) or by alternating the size of lower-case letters within a word (32 subjects). The main effects of regularity and distortion were replicated and the effect of distortion was greater for incorrect than correct stimuli, with correctly spelled words suffering a decrement in accuracy of less than 5 percentage points. Case mixing had a greater effect than size mixing on response latencies. In Experiment 3, with comparable test procedures, case mixing interacted with regularity in the subjects analysis for the multiple choice format, but not the single presentation format. This result indicates that comparisons based on visual configuration may be an artifact of multiple-choice tests.     

Effects of Error Correction on Spanish Spelling Words for Students Whose Primary Language Is Spanish

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of an error correction strategy on the spelling accuracy of Spanish words by elementary school students who come from a bilingual home environment, where the home language is Spanish. In the error correction strategy students wrote the word, viewed an accurate model of the word, and self-corrected any errors. In the traditional strategy students wrote each word three times on a paper after viewing an accurate model. All words and examples were presented in the student's home language (Spanish). Results showed that students spelled more words correctly under the error correction strategy.     

Teaching Spelling Through Prompting and Review Procedures Using Computer-Based Instruction

Computer-based instruction (CBI) was used to teach 3 sets of 20 spelling words to two 6th graders in a multiple baseline design. The CBI presented a voice recording of each spelling word and prompted the students to type the word. If they spelled the word incorrectly, a training procedure was initiated that included prompt fading and systematic review practice. Results showed that three to ten 15-min training sessions were needed for participants to score 100% on each word set. During a subsequent maintenance phase, one participant received 2 re-training sessions on word Set 2 due to low performance but no other training was provided. Average performance was 93% across all word sets during the final three sessions of the maintenance phase and 79% on a 3-week follow-up test. Kristin H. Mayfield, now at iLearn, Inc., Marietta, GA, USA.     

Perception and recognition memory of words and werds: Two-way mirror effects

We examined associative priming of words (e.g., TOAD) and pseudohomophones of those words (e.g., TODE) in lexical decision. In addition to word frequency effects, reliable base-word frequency effects were observed for pseudohomophones: Those based on high-frequency words elicited faster and more accurate correct rejections. Associative priming had disparate effects on high- and low-frequency items. Whereas priming improved performance to high-frequency pseudohomophones, it impaired performance to low-frequency pseudohomophones. The results suggested a resonance process, wherein phonologic identity and semantic priming combine to undermine the veridical perception of infrequent items. We tested this hypothesis in another experiment by administering a surprise recognition memory test after lexical decision. When asked to identify words that were spelled correctly during lexical decision, the participants often misremembered pseudohomophones as correctly spelled items. Patterns of false memory, however, were jointly affected by base-word frequencies and their original responses during lexical decision. Taken together, the results are consistent with resonance accounts of word recognition, wherein bottom-up and top-down information sources coalesce into correct, and sometimes illusory, perception. The results are also consistent with a recent lexical decision model, REM-LD, that emphasizes memory retrieval and top-down matching processes in lexical decision.     

EFFECTS OF INVENTED SPELLING AND DIRECT INSTRUCTION ON SPELLING PERFORMANCE OF SECOND-GRADE BOYS

Four second-grade boys, 2 rated by their classroom teacher as below average and 2 as above average in basic language skills, participated in a 16-week spelling investigation. The participants alternately received, in counterbalanced order, 5 weeks of an invented spelling approach that incorporated 15-min creative writing periods and 5 weeks of direct instruction that involved 15-min periods of guided practice on spelling word lists. At the end of 10 weeks, each condition was replicated for 3 additional weeks. Although direct instruction resulted in more targeted words spelled correctly, invented spelling resulted in more nontargeted words spelled correctly, higher preference ratings by children, and higher teacher ratings of the quality of 3 of the children's writing samples.     

Criterion bias and search sequence bias in word recognition

Six experiments that were designed to test the adequacy of criterion bias explanations of the word frequency effect and the semantic priming effect are reported. It was found that criterion bias models correctly predicted higher error rates in a lexical decision task for nonwords that were misspelled versions of high-frequency words (e.g., MOHTER), rather than low-frequency words (e.g., BOHTER). Also correct was the prediction of increased error rates for misspelled words preceded by a semantically related word (e.g., NURSE-DOTCOR). However, in a misspelling decision task (in which the subject must decide whether the stimulus is a word, a misspelled word, or a nonword), it can be argued that criterion bias should be inoperative, since correct responses must be delayed until all orthographic information has been checked; this should eliminate both frequency and semantic priming effects. This was found not to be the case; clear frequency and priming effects were obtained for both words and misspelled words.     

The Effects of Self-Correction Versus Traditional Spelling on the Spelling Performance and Maintenance of Third Grade Students

We examined the effect of self-correction versus a traditional spelling approach on the acquisition and maintenance of written spelling of elementary school students enrolled in third grade. Six students, who were at risk for spelling failure, served as subjects. During self-correction, students used a form with five columns that contained correct pre-written models of spelling words. After reviewing the word list, students folded back the first column, which contained the words. Then, they listened to their spelling list on individual cassette players and spelled each word in turn in the subsequent columns of the form. Students checked their spelling responses by unfolding the first column and matching their responses to the sample. Each correct spelling response was marked with a C incorrect spellings were fixed by writing the correct orthography above the word. During traditional spelling, students wrote each spelling word five times, using a pre-written model as a guide. Results showed a functional relationship between self-correction and improved spelling performance. Five of the six maintained a higher number of posttests words on maintenance probes. All students preferred the self-correction method over the traditional spelling method.     

Recognizing orally spelled words: an analysis of procedures shared with reading and spelling

Some investigators have suggested that recognizing orally spelled words is dependent on the same procedures ordinarily used in spelling, whereas others have viewed it either as dependent on reading procedures or as an independent ability. In the present study, a single subject with dyslexia and dysgraphia was examined on parallel tests of recognizing orally spelled words, reading, and spelling (writing), and a comparison was made of his performance on the three tasks. On both words and nonwords, the patient's errors in recognizing orally spelled words and in reading were alike, whereas his spelling errors were often different. The distinction between recognizing orally spelled words and spelling was further shown by his inability to recognize a set of orally spelled words that he could write correctly to dictation or on the basis of word meaning. These findings suggest that the procedures normally used for reading can accept sequences of letter identities as input when orally spelled words must be recognized.     

Orthographic Consistency Affects Spoken Word Recognition at Different Grain-Sizes

A number of previous studies found that the consistency of sound-to-spelling mappings (feedback consistency) affects spoken word recognition. In auditory lexical decision experiments, words that can only be spelled one way are recognized faster than words with multiple potential spellings. Previous studies demonstrated this by manipulating feedback consistency of rhymes. The present lexical decision study, done in English, manipulated the spelling of individual vowels within consistent rhymes. Participants recognized words with consistent rhymes where the vowel has the most typical spelling (e.g., lobe) faster than words with consistent rhymes where the vowel has a less typical spelling (e.g., loaf). The present study extends previous literature by showing that auditory word recognition is affected by orthographic regularities at different grain sizes, just like written word recognition and spelling. The theoretical and methodological implications for future research in spoken word recognition are discussed.     

Investigating the boundaries of reading units across ages and reading levels

In Experiments 1 and 2 first-, third-, and seventh-grade children and college subjects circled the letter a while reading passages constructed of words familiar to first graders. First graders made more errors on the letter a embedded in a word than on the word a, whereas the converse was true of the other age groups. In Experiments 3 and 4 first-, second-, fourth-, and seventh-grade children and college students read passages and circled the letter t, making more errors on the common word the than on other words and on correctly spelled than on misspelled words. The effect of misspelling the other words increased with age and reading skill. Our combined results suggest that reading unit size increases with age and reading ability and that, whereas younger children, like adults, unitize common words, the unitization of less common words increases as word configurations become more familiar.     

Retention and generalization of spelling words acquired using a peer-mediated instructional procedure by children with mild handicapping conditions

A peer-mediated instructional procedure termed Classwide Peer Tutoring (CWPT) has been shown to increase the rates and accuracy of student responses to academic tasks and to improve student performance on weekly spelling tests. In addition to replicating previous research, the present investigation evaluated the retention and generalization of words learned using CWPT. Students classified as mildly handicapped participated in daily practice of 10 spelling words using CWPT for 10 weeks. Short- and long-term retention of words practiced was assessed. Results indicated that the students average post-test score was over 84% correct on weekly tests, replicating previous results. When included in a dictation task the following week, 76.2% of previously tutored words were correctly spelled. Short- and longer-term retention measured on posttests was 72% and 69% correct, respectively. Modest improvements in students sight recognition of words practiced during CWPT were obtained. Student failure to learn particular words was attributable to fewer opportunities to practice these words. Further, students reported positive evaluation of CWPT and perceived positive social and self esteem outcomes.     

Orthographic influences in spoken word recognition: The consistency effect in semantic and gender categorization tasks

According to current models, spoken word recognition is driven by the phonological properties of the speech signal. However, several studies have suggested that orthographic information also influences recognition in adult listeners. In particular, it has been repeatedly shown that, in the lexical decision task, words that include rimes with inconsistent spellings (e.g., /-ip/ spelled -eap or -eep) are disadvantaged, as compared with words with consistent rime spelling. In the present study, we explored whether the orthographic consistency effect extends to tasks requiring people to process words beyond simple lexical access. Two different tasks were used: semantic and gender categorization. Both tasks produced reliable consistency effects. The data are discussed as suggesting that orthographic codes are activated during word recognition, or that the organization of phonological representations of words is affected by orthography during literacy acquisition.     

An analysis of the word-superiority effect

It is easier to decide which of two letters was presented tachistoscopically if the critical letter was in a word rather than in a scrambled word. We showed that this word-superiority effect holds just as strongly for pronounceable nonwords as for words, even when the critical letters are constant over all trials. This finding rules out word meaning and familiarity as variables accounting for the effect. In addition, it was found that the superiority of pronounceable stimuli holds for two-letter stimuli as well as four, and it is therefore concluded that the effect is not due to a memory limitation. An explanation of the effect in terms of the use of additional acoustic information is ruled out by showing that the effect was not diminished when the two possible words sounded exactly alike. An experiment using correctly and incorrectly spelled chemical formulas suggested that spelling regularities, regardless of pronounceability per se, account for the superiority effect. Finally, when decisions about two critical letters must be made on each trial, the correlation between being correct on one and on the other is higher for pronounceable stimuli under some conditions.