Spelling Patterns in Preadolescents With Atypical Language Skills: Phonological, Morphological, and Orthographic Factors

Abstract

Several investigations have considered the spelling abilities of children with reading disability; however, the spelling patterns of children with a language learning disability (LLD) have been largely ignored. This study examined the spelling error patterns of three groups of children who met strict inclusion criteria—those with a known LLD (n = 8), chronological-age-matched peers (CA; n = 8), and a younger spelling-age-matched group (SA; n = 8). An experimental spelling measure was specially designed and administered to elucidate the underlying linguistic features (clusters, digraphs, etc.) and linguistic classifications (phonological, orthographical, morphological) of misspellings. Based on inferential statistical analyses, a general pattern was that the LLD group and the SA group always differed from the CA group, whereas the LLD group performed similarly to the SA group. This finding lends credence to the hypothesis that children with an LLD, like children with reading disability, are delayed in spelling development rather than following a deviant developmental process. However, a qualitative analysis indicated two specific patterns. First, the LLD group had more trouble than did the SA group in representing the basic phonological structure of words, when complexity was increased by word length or linguistic structure. Second, in contrast to the SA group, the LLD group had greater omissions of inflected and derived morphological markers. These findings point to the critical role of morphology as the mediator between and form and meaning.