When children write nonwords to dictation

Skill in written spelling of simple, monosyllabic nonwords was investigated in 9- to 11-year-old English children. Two aspects of their spellings were of interest: first, could they spell these nonwords so that they sounded correct (nonword spelling accuracy), and second, did their spellings show evidence of biasing from words heard earlier in the test sequence? Nonword spelling was poorer for children of this age than for tested adults. Nevertheless, significant biasing occurred in these children's spellings, though not to the same extent as in adults' nonword spellings, and significant correlations emerged between reading age, nonword spelling skill, susceptibility to biasing, and real word spelling skill. Children with a reading age greater than 11 years showed biasing from word spellings that was within range of that reported for adults, and, for these more skilled readers, word spelling accuracy correlated significantly with both susceptibility to biasing and with nonword spelling accuracy. These children were not as accurate as tested adults at spelling nonwords. Children with a reading age below 11 years were poorer at nonword spelling and showed no overall biasing, yet they also showed a significant correlation between word spelling skill and nonword biasing. Together with evidence from the same task from adults with specific spelling disorders, these results suggest that word knowledge had a direct (biasing) and an indirect (general word spelling knowledge) effect on the performance of the nonword spelling task. But although skill in word spelling may be a necessary prerequisite for nonword spelling, it need not always be sufficient.     

Regaining access to marginal knowledge in a classroom setting

Students learn large amounts of information, but not all of it is remembered after courses end – meaning that valuable class time is often spent reviewing background material. Crucially, laboratory research suggests different strategies will be effective when reactivating previously learned information (i.e. marginal knowledge), as opposed to learning new information. In two experiments, we evaluated whether these laboratory results translated to the classroom. Topics from prior courses were tested to document which information students could no longer retrieve. Half were assigned to a not-tested control and half to the intervention; for these topics, students answered multiple-choice questions (without feedback) that gave them the chance to recognize the information they had failed to retrieve. Weeks later, students completed a final assessment on all topics. Crucially, multiple-choice testing increased the retrieval of previously forgotten information, providing the first classroom demonstration of the reactivation of marginal knowledge.