Development Of Orthographic Knowledge Research Articles

Contribution of orthographic knowledge to reading and spelling in Bosnian highly transparent orthography.

The link between orthographic processing skills and reading and spelling abilities has been demonstrated in different studies and languages. However, previous research has not fully clarified this relationship. We examined the relationship between orthographic knowledge and reading and spelling performance in children from the second to the fifth grade of elementary school. We included measures of orthographic knowledge in two scripts (Latin and Cyrillic) for the same language, at both the lexical and sublexical levels. Word-specific orthographic knowledge was assessed by presenting children with pairs of words in which one word followed the orthographic rules of the Bosnian language, while the other was spelled incorrectly. General orthographic knowledge was assessed with an orthographic word-likeness task, where children had to choose the correct pseudoword, which followed legal orthographic patterns, while the incorrect ones did not. Reading and spelling, phonological awareness, and working memory were also included in the research. In Latin, no relationship was found between reading and spelling and orthographic knowledge, independent of the measure of orthographic processing. In Cyrillic, spelling performance predicts progress in general orthographic knowledge. The results of the study suggest that orthographic knowledge does not contribute to reading and spelling between Grades 2 and 3. General orthographic knowledge was an independent predictor of spelling in Grades 4 and 5 for Cyrillic, the second script. The findings suggest that the development of orthographic knowledge should be considered in the context of the specific language, script, and orthography.

Contributions of executive functions and linguistic skills to verbal fluency in children

ABSTRACT Despite the widespread use of verbal fluency (VF) tasks in child neuropsychological research and clinical practice, the contribution of executive and linguistic processes to variability in children’s fluency performance is still unclear. This is particularly important when considering the development of orthographic knowledge and semantic network during childhood. The present study investigated the contributions of executive functions and linguistic skills to performance in VF tasks in children. We examined the contributions of basic executive functions (i.e.,inhibitory control, working memory, and flexibility) and high-order executive functions (i.e., planning), vocabulary, lexical access speed, and phonological awareness to VF performance in 111 typically developing children (8–10 years old). Multiple regression analyses showed that phonological awareness was a predictor of performance in phonemic verbal fluency (PVF), and lexical access speed was the best predictor of performance in semantic verbal fluency (SVF). Among the executive function components, working memory was a predictor of performance in PVF and most categories of SVF (except animal fluency). In addition to working memory resources (i.e., a basic executive function), planning (i.e., a high-level executive function) was also recruited in the clothing category of SVF. These results highlight the importance of phonological processing skills in children’s performance on VF tasks and show similarities and differences in the contributions of various linguistic and executive skills to PVF and SVF. These findings have implications for interpreting the results of these measures in research and clinical practice.

The abc of the b and c in Spanish: inconsistent and context dependent letter errors and the development of orthographic knowledge in primary school children

This study presents the results of a cross-sectional reading and spelling assessment conducted among 118 Spanish children in 3rd, 4th and 5th grade. The first aim was to explore whether children´s use of orthographic knowledge was modulated by lexical variables—word frequency and orthographic neighborhood—or sublexical variables—context-dependent, inconsistent or neutral letters- as well as the developmental pathway of such knowledge in both tasks. The second aim was to provide insight into the type of errors committed by children in order to detect the words and structures that convey most difficulties. Data showed that children rely on sublexical processes more than on lexical ones in reading and writing. Persistent errors in context-dependent and inconsistent letters were evident even in 5th grade, and writing involved greater difficulty in all grades. The presence of other type of errors such as substitutions, omissions or lexicalizations was negligible. Finally, an item analysis revealed that errors were located in low-frequency syllables, particularly in the first position. Data point to specific and persistent difficulties in context-dependent and inconsistent letters that may hinder the consolidation of accurate orthographic word representations in Spanish.

Kindergarten Teachers’ Use of Writing Scaffolds to Support Children’s Developing Orthographic Knowledge

ABSTRACTOrthographic knowledge is information about the writing system stored in memory that children draw upon to read and write. The purpose of this qualitative study was to examine the ways in which kindergarten teachers use verbal scaffolds to support children’s development of orthographic knowledge during writing instruction. This case study of four teachers over four weeks in a suburban school district included observations, semi-structured interviews, and surveys. Findings indicated that teachers regularly used a wide range of scaffolding strategies during writing instruction; however, teachers tended to use more high-support than low-support scaffolds. Teachers employed scaffolds more often in the independent writing context. This study represents a first step in closely observing the verbal scaffolds kindergarten teachers use to build children’s orthographic knowledge during writing instruction.

Measuring Spanish orthographic development in private, public and subsidised schools in Chile

The current study has a twofold purpose: first, to determine the reliability of a tool for assessing orthographic development in Spanish; second, to assess differences in students’ performance on the measure across multiple types of primary schools in a large city in Chile. A Spanish developmental spelling inventory that contained words of increasing orthographic difficulty was administered twice to students in first through fifth grades in three types of schools: public, private and partially subsidised. These school types in large part represent varying levels of student socio-economic status because of costs associated with attending them. Results demonstrate that (a) the Spanish spelling inventory is able to reliably measure the development of orthographic knowledge in Spanish, and (b) there is a relationship between school type and student achievement. The authors describe individual cases to highlight the qualitative nature of differential performance for students in greater- or lesser-resourced schools.

The case for frequency sensitivity in orthographic learning

This paper positions the importance of frequency sensitivity in the development of orthographic knowledge throughout childhood and promotes learning to spell as a vehicle which may be used effectively to develop this sensitivity. It is suggested that orthographic knowledge is advanced via a process of ‘frequency sensitivity’ to ‘patterns and sequences’ and ‘rules and regularities’ particular to English orthography and that the process of sensitivity to these coarse grain orthographic patterns is influenced by consistency in sound and by morphological knowledge (knowledge of morphemes; words or word parts that form the smallest unit of meaning in language). A model highlighting the increasing importance of orthography and morphology as reading and spelling development progresses is presented. Discussion of the importance of considering phonology, orthography and morphology throughout literacy development and the relative importance of each is discussed. Distinctions are drawn between the processes involved in children who are good readers and good spellers, children who are good readers and poor spellers, and children who are poor readers and poor spellers. This paper outlines how considering these interrelated and developmentally sensitive contributors to literacy development can contribute to the practice of educational professionals in promoting the development of literacy skills throughout childhood.

Development of orthographic knowledge in German‐speaking children: a 2‐year longitudinal study

There is growing evidence that children develop orthographic knowledge from the very beginning of literacy acquisition. This study investigated the development of German‐speaking children's orthographic knowledge with a nonword choice task. One nonword in each pair contained a frequent consonant doublet (zommul) and the other nonword contained an infrequent doublet (zobbul). Children (N = 54) performed at chance level in kindergarten but chose nonwords with frequent doublets significantly more often than expected by chance in first and second grade. Correlations between children's orthographic knowledge and their reading and spelling skills were not found. The results indicate that knowledge of frequent double consonants is evident in German‐speaking children from first grade onwards, but it is not related to their reading and spelling performance. This finding is consistent with the view that children in transparent orthographies rely less on frequent letter patterns during reading and spelling compared to children in deep orthographies.

Phonemic Awareness is Not Necessary to Become a Skilled Deaf Reader

A review of research investigating prelingually deaf individuals’ word reading skills, phonemic awareness, and reading comprehension challenges the widely held conclusion that the impoverished readings skills of such individuals are the result of poor phonological processing abilities. Compelling findings show that—notwithstanding often remarkably poor phonemic awareness of the prelingually deaf—such readers succeed in developing word-reading strategies that sustain written word recognition at comparable levels to their hearing counterparts. Moreover, evidence suggests no direct causal relationship between their sensitivity to the phonological properties of words and their ability to comprehend connected text. These findings further indicate that such readers may gain from the development of orthographic knowledge in conjunction with syntactic awareness and metacognitive skills but not necessarily from the sheer fostering of their phonemic/phonological awareness.

The Development of Orthographic Knowledge in Prelingually Deaf Individuals: New Insight from Arab Readers

The present study was designed to further clarify whether impoverished phonological skills of prelingually deaf readers undermine their ability to process written words. The word reading skills of forty students with prelingual deafness recruited from two levels of education (primary school, mid/high school) and a chronologically age-matched hearing control group—all of them reading Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) in a diglossic context—were examined with a research paradigm that required the categorization of written real words and paralleling pseudo-homophones. In general, findings suggest that despite severely impaired phonological decoding skills, prelingually deaf MSA readers eventually succeed to develop word reading skills that sustain word recognition with hearing-comparable efficiency. Linguistic representations underlying these skills seem to be of a nonphonological, most likely orthographic nature. Findings are discussed with reference to the validity of reading theories that assign a central role to phonology in the explanation of reading failure in individuals with prelingual deafness.

Causal connections in the acquisition of an orthographic rule: a test of Uta Frith's developmental hypothesis

In a longitudinal study we tested Frith's causal hypothesis that children first gain orthographic knowledge through reading and then later, as a consequence, through spelling. Children from Years 2 and 3 were tested three times over two years on their reading and spelling of pseudo-words which conformed to the conditional orthographic rule, the 'final -e' or 'split-digraph' rule. Cross-lagged panel correlation analyses suggested that the children's success in reading split-digraph words was a causal determinant of their learning to use split-digraphs in spelling, in the 7- to 8-year period and, with one year-group but not with the other, in the 8- to 9-year period. In the 9- to 10-year period children's success in reading no longer seemed to affect their spelling. These results strongly support Frith's causal hypothesis about the development of orthographic knowledge.

What the Processing of Real Words and Pseudohomophones Can Tell Us about the Development of Orthographic Knowledge in Prelingually Deafened Individuals

This study represents an attempt to determine the nature and efficiency of the strategies used by prelingually deafened individuals for the recognition of written words with reference to an orthographic self-teaching concept (D. L. Share, 1995). A research paradigm asking the participants to make categorical judgments for real words and pseudohomophones of the real words was used for gathering the data. Participants were prelingually deafened, native signers (n = 11, age = 14.18) and a hearing control group (n = 25, age = 15.00). In general, findings suggest that, although the participants with deafness were very impaired in their phonological decoding abilities, their efficiency in recognizing and categorizing written words was similar to that of their hearing counterparts. This suggests that they must have developed strategies for the acquisition of orthographic knowledge that do not rely on phonology.

Orthographic learning during reading: examining the role of self-teaching

Thirty-four second grade children read target homophonic pseudowords (e.g., slurst/slirst) in the context of real stories in a test of the self-teaching theory of early reading acquisition. The degree of orthographic learning was assessed with three converging tasks: homophonic choice, spelling, and target naming. Each of the tasks indicated that orthographic learning had taken place because processing of target homophones (e.g., yait) was superior to that of their homophonic controls (e.g., yate). Consistent with the self-teaching hypothesis, we obtained a substantial correlation ( r=.52) between orthographic learning and the number of target homophones correctly decoded during story reading. Hierarchical multiple regression analyses indicated that neither RAN tasks nor general cognitive ability predicted variance in orthographic learning once the number of target homophones correctly decoded during story reading had been partialed out. In contrast, a measure of orthographic knowledge predicted variance in orthographic learning once the number of targets correctly decoded had been partialed. The development of orthographic knowledge appears to be not entirely parasitic on decoding ability.

Development of Orthographic Knowledge and the Foundations of Literacy: A Memorial Festschrift for Edmund H. Henderson

Development of Orthographic Knowledge and the Foundations of Literacy: A Memorial Festschrift for Edmund H. Henderson