Orthographic knowledge predicts reading and spelling skills over and above general intelligence and phonological awareness

Abstract

It is widely accepted that general intelligence and phonological awareness contribute to children’s acquisition of reading and spelling skills. A further candidate in this regard is orthographic knowledge (i.e., the knowledge about permissible letter patterns). It consists of two components, word-specific (i.e., the knowledge of the spelling of specific words) and general orthographic knowledge (i.e., the knowledge about legal letter patterns of a writing system). Among German students, previous studies have shown that word-specific orthographic knowledge contributes to both reading and spelling. The results regarding general orthographic knowledge and its contribution to reading and spelling are inconsistent. The major goal of the present study was to determine the incremental predictive value of orthographic knowledge for reading and spelling skills among German elementary-school children (N = 66), over and above the contribution of general intelligence and phonological awareness. The second goal was to examine whether there is a difference between the two subtypes of orthographic knowledge in the amount of their respective contribution to reading and spelling performance. The results show that word-specific as well as general orthographic knowledge contribute to both reading and spelling performance, over and above intelligence and phonological awareness. Furthermore, it reveals that both word-specific and general orthographic knowledge explain more variance of spelling compared to reading. Possible explanations for these results, limitations, and implications of the study are being discussed.