Use of Spelling-to-Sound Rules in Reading

Abstract

The present study investigated the use of spelling-to-sound rules by second-graders, fifth-graders, and adults in the reading of novel words. Specifically, the study was concerned with the pronunciation of the vowel of monosyllabic synthetic words. Two classes of rules were studied: context-free rules, in which the pronunciation of a single-letter vowel or vowel digraph is invariant across context, and context-sensitive rules, in which the pronunciation of the vowel is dependent upon subsequent letters of the word. The performance of children and adults on the context-free stimuli indicated that beginning as well as mature readers make use of spelling-to-sound correspondence rules in the pronunciation of novel words and that the tendency to use such rules increases with age. The context-sensitive rules were not generally used; subjects tended to give the most common pronunciation for a vowel regardless of context. However, when a pronunciation other than the most common one was used for a vowel, it tended to be used in the context predicted by the context-sensitive rules. Two models of the use of spelling-to-sound rules in reading were proposed.