Nonword Spelling Research Articles

The Relationship Between Early Spelling and Decoding.

This study aimed to elucidate the nature of the relationship between the development of decoding and encoding skills in the first year at school. The foundational literacy skills of one hundred eighty 5-year-old children were examined on three occasions over their first year of literacy instruction. Participants received the same literacy curriculum. The predictive utility of early spelling on later reading accuracy, reading comprehension, and spelling outcomes was explored. Performance on matched nonword spelling and nonword reading tasks was also used to compare the use of particular graphemes across these contexts. Regression and path analyses showed that nonword spelling was a unique predictor of later (end of year) reading and played a facilitative role in the emergence of decoding. Children were generally more accurate on spelling than decoding for the majority of graphemes evaluated in the matched tasks. Factors such as position of the grapheme in the word, complexity of the grapheme (e.g., digraph vs. graph), and the scope and sequence of the literacy curriculum influenced children's accuracy for specific graphemes. The development of phonological spelling appears to play a facilitatory role in early literacy acquisition. Implications for the assessment and teaching of spelling in the first year of schooling are explored.

Apraxia of speech with phonological alexia and agraphia following resection of the left middle precentral gyrus: illustrative case.

Apraxia of speech is a disorder of speech-motor planning in which articulation is effortful and error-prone despite normal strength of the articulators. Phonological alexia and agraphia are disorders of reading and writing disproportionately affecting unfamiliar words. These disorders are almost always accompanied by aphasia. A 36-year-old woman underwent resection of a grade IV astrocytoma based in the left middle precentral gyrus, including a cortical site associated with speech arrest during electrocortical stimulation mapping. Following surgery, she exhibited moderate apraxia of speech and difficulty with reading and spelling, both of which improved but persisted 6 months after surgery. A battery of speech and language assessments was administered, revealing preserved comprehension, naming, cognition, and orofacial praxis, with largely isolated deficits in speech-motor planning and the spelling and reading of nonwords. This case describes a specific constellation of speech-motor and written language symptoms-apraxia of speech, phonological agraphia, and phonological alexia in the absence of aphasia-which the authors theorize may be attributable to disruption of a single process of "motor-phonological sequencing." The middle precentral gyrus may play an important role in the planning of motorically complex phonological sequences for production, independent of output modality.

A better start literacy approach: effectiveness of Tier 1 and Tier 2 support within a response to teaching framework

The Better Start Literacy Approach (BSLA) is a strengths-based approach to supporting children’s literacy learning in their first year of school. Previous research has shown the approach is effective at accelerating foundational literacy knowledge in children with lower levels of oral language. This study examined the impact of the BSLA for children with varied language profiles and across schools from diverse socioeconomic communities. Additionally, a controlled analysis of the impact of Tier 2 teaching within a response to teaching framework was undertaken. Participants included 402 five-year-old children from 14 schools in New Zealand. A randomised delayed treatment design was utilised to establish the effect of Tier 1 teaching. Analyses showed a significant Tier 1 intervention effect for phoneme awareness, letter-sound knowledge, non-word reading and non-word spelling. There was no difference in intervention effects across socioeconomic groupings. Children were identified for Tier 2 teaching after 10 weeks of Tier 1 implementation. The progress of 98 children in response to Tier 2 teaching was compared to 26 children who met Tier 2 criteria but received only Tier 1 teaching within this study. Children in the Tier 2 group scored significantly higher on phonological awareness, non-word reading, and spelling than the control group at the post-Tier 2 assessment point, after controlling for pre-Tier 2 scores. The results suggest that a proactive strengths-based approach to supporting foundational literacy learning in children’s first year of school benefits all learners. The findings have important implications for early provision of literacy learning support in order to reduce current inequities in literacy outcomes.

A mobile app that uses neurofeedback and multi-sensory learning methods improves reading abilities in dyslexia: A pilot study

Reading comprehension is difficult to improve for children with dyslexia because of the continuing demands of orthographic decoding in combination with limited working memory capacity. Children with dyslexia get special education that improves spelling, phonemic and vocabulary awareness, however the latest research indicated that special education does not improve reading comprehension. With the aim of improving reading comprehension, reading speed and all other reading abilities of children with dyslexia, Auto Train Brain that is a novel mobile app using neurofeedback and multi-sensory learning methods was developed. With a clinical study, we wanted to demonstrate the effectiveness of Auto Train Brain on reading abilities. We compared the cognitive improvements obtained with Auto Train Brain with the improvements obtained with special dyslexia training. Auto Train Brain was applied to 16 children with dyslexia 60 times for 30 minutes. The control group consisted of 14 children with dyslexia who did not have remedial training with Auto Train Brain, but who did continue special education. The TILLS test was applied to both the experimental and the control group at the beginning of the experiment and after a 6-month duration from the first TILLS test. Comparison of the pre- and post- TILLS test results indicated that applying neurofeedback and multi-sensory learning method improved reading comprehension of the experimental group more than that of the control group statistically significantly. Both Auto Train Brain and special education improved phonemic awareness and nonword spelling.

A Tool for Automatic Scoring of Spelling Performance.

PurposeThe evaluation of spelling performance in aphasia reveals deficits in written language and can facilitate the design of targeted writing treatments. Nevertheless, manual scoring of spelling performance is time-consuming, laborious, and error prone. We propose a novel method based on the use of distance metrics to automatically score spelling. This study compares six automatic distance metrics to identify the metric that best corresponds to the gold standard—manual scoring—using data from manually obtained spelling scores from individuals with primary progressive aphasia.MethodThree thousand five hundred forty word and nonword spelling productions from 42 individuals with primary progressive aphasia were scored manually. The gold standard—the manual scores—were compared to scores from six automated distance metrics: sequence matcher ratio, Damerau–Levenshtein distance, normalized Damerau–Levenshtein distance, Jaccard distance, Masi distance, and Jaro–Winkler similarity distance. We evaluated each distance metric based on its correlation with the manual spelling score.ResultsAll automatic distance scores had high correlation with the manual method for both words and nonwords. The normalized Damerau–Levenshtein distance provided the highest correlation with the manual scoring for both words (rs = .99) and nonwords (rs = .95).ConclusionsThe high correlation between the automated and manual methods suggests that automatic spelling scoring constitutes a quick and objective approach that can reliably substitute the existing manual and time-consuming spelling scoring process, an important asset for both researchers and clinicians.

Decisions about consonant doubling among non-native speakers of English: graphotactic and phonological influences

Graphotactic as well as phonological factors influence native English speakers’ decisions about consonant doubling in the spelling of nonwords, e.g., zimen versus zimmen. This study examined the extent to which such influences apply to non-native speakers of English, who presumably have less knowledge of English graphotactics and phonology and less opportunity to be explicitly instructed, and whether such influences vary as a function of first language (L1) background. Eighty-five university students in Beijing who study English as a second language (ESL) with contrasting L1 backgrounds (46 Chinese and 39 Korean, Mage = 20.51 years, SD = 1.95) completed a nonword spelling task and a standardized English spelling ability test. In the nonword spelling task, participants were asked to spell items in which the initial consonant or cluster was followed by a stressed vowel with medial consonant that would generally double in English. Half of the first syllables in the nonwords had short vowels and half of them had long vowels. Similar to native English speakers, ESL learners were more likely to use medial consonant doubling when the preceding vowel was short, spelled with one letter, and ended with spellings associated with higher rate of doubling in the English system. Phonological influence was stronger in more skilled spellers than in less skilled spellers, whereas the strength of graphotactic influence did not differ across the range of spelling ability. No significant difference of L1 background was found in the use of consonant doubling. Findings highlight the generality of statistical learning underlying spelling across different first language backgrounds and varying English spelling abilities.

Deep Learning-Based Context-Sensitive Spelling Typing Error Correction

This study aims to solve the context-sensitive spelling error problem for English documents. There are two types of spelling errors in English: non-word spelling errors and context-sensitive spelling errors. Non-word spelling errors are simple to correct because they can only be detected by matching the words in sentences with those in a dictionary; however, context-sensitive spelling errors entail increased difficulty of correction because the relationship between the word to be corrected and the surrounding context must be known. Spelling errors are considered noise in every field that uses text information, and preprocessing via document correction is necessary to minimize this problem. Context-sensitive spelling errors include homophone errors (which arise from the incorrect use of words that sound the same but are spelled differently), typographical errors (caused by striking an incorrect key on a keyboard), grammatical errors (which occur when the user does not know the correct grammatical rules), and cross word boundary errors (which arise from incorrect spacing between words). This study focuses on typographical errors. The context-sensitive spelling error problem is solved using the deep learning method, which is not an existing statistical method. The deep learning language model-based correction approach is divided into four parts, namely, correction based on word embedding information, contextual embedding information, an auto-regressive (AR) language model, and an auto-encoding (AE) language model. In this study, the best correction performance was obtained for the AE language model-based approach, and we verified its performance through a detailed correction test.

Predictors of Reading Skills in Children With Listening Concerns.

Previous research shows that children with reading disorders perform poorly on auditory processing (AP) tasks. Correlational studies have also shown significant associations between some AP tasks and word and nonword reading. There is less clear evidence for AP contributions to spelling and passage reading. The aim of this research was to extend current knowledge by investigating the association between a range of AP measures used clinically and children's reading of words, nonwords, and passages, as well as word spelling. Regression analyses were conducted on data from 90 children 7 to 13 years of age (58 males) with reported listening and/or reading concerns. All children had normal hearing sensitivity and were tested on AP tasks including the frequency pattern test (FPT), dichotic digits test, random gap detection test, and the masking level difference. Reading tasks included word, nonword, and passage reading. Phonologic processing, core language skills, nonverbal intelligence, memory, and attention were also measured. All multiregression analyses were fixed order with age and gender, nonverbal intelligence, core language, phoneme manipulation, and digits backward scores included in the model before AP measures. FPT was the only AP task that accounted for significant unique variance in word/nonword reading and nonword spelling, but not passage reading. The findings from this study failed to show an association between many clinically used AP measures and children's reading and spelling outcomes. Nevertheless, they reiterate the importance of evaluating FPT in children with word reading disorders. The findings justify further investigation into the role of this test when diagnosing children with reading or spelling disorders.

Executive Functions and Language: Their Differential Influence on Mono- vs. Multilingual Spelling in Primary School.

We aimed at unveiling the role of executive functions (EFs) and language-related skills in spelling for mono- versus multilingual primary school children. We focused on EF and language-related skills, in particular lexicon size and phonological awareness (PA), because these factors were found to predict spelling in studies predominantly conducted with monolinguals, and because multilingualism can modulate these factors. There is evidence for (a) a bilingual advantage in EF due to constant high cognitive demands through language control, (b) a smaller mental lexicon in German and (c) possibly better PA. Multilinguals in Germany show on average poorer German language proficiency, what can influence performance on language-based tasks negatively. Thus, we included two spelling tasks to tease apart spelling based on lexical knowledge (i.e., word spelling) from spelling based on non-lexical strategies (i.e., non-word spelling). Our sample consisted of heterogeneous third graders from Germany: 69 monolinguals (age: M = 108 months) and 57 multilinguals (age: M = 111 months). On less language-dependent tasks (e.g., non-word spelling, PA, intelligence, short-term memory (STM) and three EF tasks testing switching, inhibition, and working memory) performance of both groups did not differ significantly. However, multilinguals performed significantly more poorly on tasks measuring German lexicon size and word spelling than monolinguals. Regression analyses revealed that for multilinguals, inhibition was related to spelling, whereas switching was the only EF component to influence word spelling in monolinguals and non-word spelling performance in both groups. By adding lexicon size and other language-related factors to the regression models, the influence of switching was reduced to insignificant effects, but inhibition remained significant for multilinguals. Language-related skills best predicted spelling and both language groups shared those variables: PA for word spelling, and STM for non-word spelling. Additionally, multilinguals’ word spelling performance was also predicted by their German lexicon size, and non-word spelling performance by PA. This study offers an in-depth look at spelling acquisition at a certain point of literacy development. Mono- and multilinguals have the predominant factors for spelling in common, but probably due to superior language knowledge, monolinguals were already able to make use of EF during spelling. For multilinguals, German lexicon size was more important for spelling than EF. For multilinguals’ spelling these functions might come into play only at a later stage.

Spelling in Children With Cochlear Implants: Evidence of Underlying Processing Differences.

This study compared the spelling skills and sub-skills of young children with cochlear implants (CIs) who use spoken language only (n = 14) with those of a same-aged typically hearing (TH) control group (n = 30). Spelling accuracy was assessed using irregular and nonsense word stimuli. Error and regression analyses were conducted to provide insight into the phonological and orthographic spelling strategies used by each group. Results indicated that children with CIs were as accurate as the TH group. However, misspellings made by the CI group were less phonologically plausible, and while nonword spelling accuracy was related to letter-sound knowledge for the TH group, the same relationship was non-significant for the CI group. Hence, despite demonstrating a similar degree of overall spelling success to TH children, children with CIs appeared to apply phonics skills less effectively.

21-Brain network activity during reading and writing of Czech words and nonwords

Introduction We used fMRI to identify the neural networks involved in processing Czech words and nonwords during reading aloud and writing to dictation. Activation in language areas and domain-general networks - dorsal attention (DAN), frontotparietal control (FPC), and default mode network (DMN) - were compared. Methods Twenty-five Czech native speakers performed block design tasks on 3T Siemens Prisma scanner. Forty words and forty nonwords were presented. Passive viewing of checkerboards and simple low-level motor condition were used as baselines. Results For reading and spelling of words, we observed activation in the language network. During reading and spelling of nonwords, stronger activation of visual word-form area (VWFA), language regions and additional recruitment of DAN and FPC were observed. The deactivations in DMN were stronger for nonwords than for words in both tasks. Conclusion Despite the fact that reading and spelling differ in sensory input and motor output, they both engage left-lateralized components of the language network implicated in orthographic (VWFA) and phonological processing. Nonwords are more difficult than real words and therefore produce stronger activation within the task positive regions and higher level of deactivations in DMN.

Phonological and graphotactic influences on spellers' decisions about consonant doubling.

Even adults sometimes have difficulty choosing between single- and double-letter spellings, as in spinet versus spinnet. The present study examined the phonological and graphotactic factors that influence adults' use of single versus double medial consonants in the spelling of nonwords. We tested 111 adults from a community sample who varied widely in spelling ability. Better spellers were more affected than less good spellers by phonological context in that they were more likely todouble consonants after short vowels and less likely to double consonants after long vowels. Although descriptions of the English writing system focus on the role of phonology in determining use of single versus double consonants, participants were also influenced by graphotactic context. There was an effect of preceding graphotactic context, such that spellers were less likely to use a double consonant when they spelled the preceding vowel with more than one letter than when they spelled it with one letter. There was also an effect of following graphotactic context, such that doubling rate varied with the letters that the participant used at the end of the nonword. These graphotactic influences did not differ significantly in strength across the range of spelling ability in our study. Discussion focuses on the role of statistical learning in the learning of spelling patterns, especially those patterns that are not explicitly taught.

Hope for the Future and Literacy Achievement in a Sample of Impoverished South African Primary School Children

ABSTRACTThis article reports on a study that investigated the problem of hope for the future and literacy achievement in a sample of impoverished South African primary school children. data was collected through a quantitative survey that was administered to 160 learners from four classes of grades 5 to 7 at a school in Soweto township, Johannesburg, South Africa. The survey comprised five literacy tests that were standardised by Do-IT Profiler, an institute based in the United Kingdom (UK), and Shape the learner, a South African based consultancy. The results showed a statistically significant relationship between hope for the future and literacy scores, with learners who had less hope for the future scoring significantly lower on the literacy tests used in the study. Specifically, learners with less hope for the future performed noticeably lower in the real word test, followed by spelling, words spelt correctly, reading fluency, and non-word spelling. Based on social constructivist learning theory, positive psychology, and hope theory, the author discusses the implications of the findings for literacy achievement in children living in poverty. Several important recommendations are made, namely: the use of a methodological tool to identify specific literacy skills in children; the support that could be provided by educators and school psychologists; and a multilevel focus in targeting poverty eradication.

Developmental surface and phonological dyslexia in both Greek and English

The hallmark of developmental surface dyslexia in English and French is inaccurate reading of words with atypical spelling-sound correspondences. According to Douklias, Masterson and Hanley (2009), surface dyslexia can also be observed in Greek (a transparent orthography for reading that does not contain words of this kind). Their findings suggested that surface dyslexia in Greek can be characterized by slow reading of familiar words, and by inaccurate spelling of words with atypical sound-spelling correspondences (Greek is less transparent for spelling than for reading). In this study, we report seven adult cases whose slow reading and impaired spelling accuracy satisfied these criteria for Greek surface dyslexia. When asked to read words with atypical grapheme-phoneme correspondences in English (their second language), their accuracy was severely impaired. A co-occurrence was also observed between impaired spelling of words with atypical phoneme-grapheme correspondences in English and Greek. These co-occurrences provide strong evidence that surface dyslexia genuinely exists in Greek and that slow reading of real words in Greek reflects the same underlying impairment as that which produces inaccurate reading of atypical words in English. Two further individuals were observed with impaired reading and spelling of nonwords in both languages, consistent with developmental phonological dyslexia. Neither of the phonological dyslexics read words slowly. In terms of computational models of reading aloud, these findings suggest that slow reading by dyslexics in transparent orthographies is the consequence of a developmental impairment of the lexical (Coltheart, Rastle, Perry, Langdon, & Zeigler, 2001; Perry, Ziegler, & Zorzi, 2010) or semantic reading route (Plaut, McClelland, Seidenberg, & Patterson, 1996). This outcome provides evidence that the neurophysiological substrate(s) that support the lexical/semantic and the phonological pathways that are involved in reading and spelling are the same in both Greek and English.

Developing Nonword Spelling Assessment for Elementary Students

배경 및 목적: 본 연구는 초기 철자발달인 음운적 발달에 대한 아동의 철자능력을 정확하게 측정하고, 철자 문제를 진단할 수 있는 무의미단어 철자 검사도구를(KDSA-NW) 개발하는 데 목적이 있다. 방법: 문헌분석을 통해 선정된 음운적 7개의 철자유형을 포함한 단어들로 예비문항을 개발한 후 세 차례 예비검사를 실시하여 검사문항을 선별하였다. KDSA-NW가...

Cognitive predictors of shallow-orthography spelling speed and accuracy in 6th grade children

Spelling accuracy and time course was investigated in a sample of 100 Norwegian 6th grade students completing a standardized spelling-to-dictation task. Students responded by keyboard with accurate recordings of response-onset latency (RT) and inter-keypress interval (IKI). We determined effects of a number of child-level cognitive ability factors, and of word-level factors—particularly the location within the word of a spelling challenge (e.g., letter doubling), if present. Spelling accuracy was predicted by word reading (word split) performance, non-word spelling accuracy, keyboard key-finding speed and short-term memory span. Word reading performance predicted accuracy just for words with spelling challenges. For correctly spelled words, RT was predicted by non-word spelling response time and by speed on a key-finding task, and mean IKI by non-verbal cognitive ability, word reading, non-word spelling response time, and key-finding speed. Compared to words with no challenge, mean IKI was shorter for words with an initial challenge and longer for words with a mid-word challenge. These findings suggest that spelling is not fully planned when typing commences, a hypothesis that is confirmed by the fact that IKI immediately before within word challenges were reliably longer than elsewhere within the same word. Taken together our findings imply that routine classroom spelling tests better capture student competence if they focus not only on accuracy but also on production time course.

Graphotactics and spelling: Evidence from consonant doubling

Abstract Choosing between alternative spellings for sounds can be difficult for even experienced spellers. We examined the factors that influence adults’ choices in one such case: single- versus double-letter spellings of medial consonants in English. The major systematic influence on the choice between medial singletons and doublets has been thought to be phonological context: whether the preceding vowel is phonologically long or short. With phonological context equated, we found influences of graphotactic context—both the number of letters in the spelling of the vowel and the spelling sequence following the medial consonant—in adults’ spelling of nonwords and in the English vocabulary itself. Existing models of the spelling process do not include a mechanism by which the letters that are selected for one phoneme can influence the choice of spellings for another phoneme and thus require modification in order to explain the present results.

A sublexical training study for spelling in a biliterate Greek- and English-speaking child

ABSTRACTRI is an emergent trilingual boy, literate in Greek and English, with difficulties in reading and spelling in both languages. Assessment with non-literacy tests revealed a deficit in phonological ability and in visual memory for sequentially presented characters. RI took part in a training programme that targeted sublexical spelling processes. Post-intervention assessment revealed improvement in reading and spelling in Greek but not in English. Assessments of lexical and sublexical skills showed improvement in nonword spelling and nonword reading for Greek. For English, there was some indication of improvement in nonword reading at delayed post-intervention testing, but no evidence of improvement in nonword spelling. Possible reasons for the difference in outcome for the two languages are considered, including the level of transparency of written Greek and English.

Order short-term memory capacity predicts nonword reading and spelling in first and second grade

Recent theories of short-term memory (STM) distinguish between item information, which reflects the temporary activation of long-term representations stored in the language system, and serial-order information, which is encoded in a specific representational system that is independent of the language network. Some studies examining the relationship between reading acquisition and verbal STM for order and item information separately in beginning readers have found that order STM capacity is independently predictive of nonword decoding abilities in first grade, but item STM is not. In this longitudinal study, we first aimed to explore whether this finding also holds for nonword spelling abilities. We also sought to determine whether order STM capacity remains an independent predictor of nonword decoding and spelling abilities in the second year of reading instruction. For this purpose, 70 typically developing children were followed over 3 years, from kindergarten to second grade. In kindergarten, children were administered order and item STM tasks and phonological awareness tasks, in addition to tasks assessing letter name knowledge, vocabulary knowledge, and nonverbal reasoning. In first and second grades, the children’s word and nonword reading and spelling abilities were assessed. The results revealed that order STM capacity was a robust independent predictor of nonword reading and spelling abilities in first and second grade, but was not related to the abilities to read and spell words. The specific role of order STM in the acquisition of the sublexical reading and spelling routes is discussed.

Spelling Processes of Children with Nonsyndromic Cleft Lip and/or Palate: A Preliminary Study

Objective : To compare the cognitive-linguistic processes underlying spelling performance of children with cleft lip and/or palate with those of typically developing children. Design : An assessment battery including tests of hearing, articulation, verbal short-term and working memory, and phonological awareness, as well as word and nonword spelling, was administered to both groups. Participants : A total of 15 children with nonsyndromic cleft lip and/or palate were case-matched by age and sex to 15 typically developing children. The children were aged between 6 and 8 years and were bilingual, with English the dominant language. Results : Wilcoxon signed-rank tests revealed that the performance of children with cleft lip and/or palate was significantly poorer on phoneme deletion and nonword spelling (P < .05) compared with typically developing children. Spearman correlation analyses revealed different relationships between the cognitive-linguistic and spelling measures for the cleft lip and/or palate and typically developing groups. Conclusions : Children with cleft lip and/or palate underachieve in phonological awareness and spelling skills. To facilitate early intervention for literacy problems, speech-language pathologists should routinely assess the cognitive-linguistic processing of children with cleft lip and/or palate, especially phonological awareness, as part of their case management protocols.