EARLY AND CURRENT READING AND SPELLING PRACTICES OF GIFTED SPELLERS

This study continued investigating the early reading and spelling experiences as well as the spelling practices of the finalists in the Scripps Howard National Spelling Bee, specifically the 1987 spellers who were considered gifted spellers. Two open-ended questionnaires were used: one for the parents of the spellers and one for the spellers. A follow-up telephone interview was conducted with a random sample of respondents. Results indicated that gifted spellers showed an early interest in language arts activities with 86% of the parents reporting that their children could read prior to formal schooling. The spellers considered themselves avid readers and indicated sophisticated metacognitive awareness whether reading or spelling. Results that suggested the spellers passed through developmental spelling stages far earlier than average children and relied on visual memory strategies, word meanings, and saying/writing words to master the orthography replicated findings from an earlier study.     

Separating effects of orthographic similarity and contour summation in the identification of masked letter strings

We separated effects of contour summation and orthographic similarity under masking conditions, by comparing identification with simultaneous and sequentially presented letter strings, which either did or did not overlap spatially. With overlapping simultaneous stimuli, performance was better for strings with similar contours than for strings with the same letters (the orthographic similarity condition). This suggests that contour summation effects were strongest in the condition where stimuli had similar contours. With sequential presentations, performance in the similar contour and the orthographically similar conditions was equated when the stimuli were overlapping. However, effects of contour summation decreased when prime and target letters were spatially displaced, whereas performance in the orthographically similar condition was maintained. We conclude that effects of orthographic similarity can be distinguished from effects of contour summation, under masking conditions.