Spelling Measures Research Articles

Field-Based Evaluation of Two-Tiered Instruction for Enhancing Kindergarten Phonological Awareness

Research Findings: This study reports on the outcomes of a multisite, two-tiered, response-to-intervention instructional model for delivering phonological awareness instruction and intervention to kindergartners. Fifty-seven kindergartners from 3 classrooms participated in a supplemental phonological awareness program, and 56 kindergartners from 3 classrooms received the prevailing school-adopted literacy curriculum. All children in the supplemental condition received supplemental classroom-based phonological awareness instruction in addition to the adopted literacy curriculum. At mid-year, 6 low literacy achievers were identified in each supplemental classroom (n = 18) to participate in an additional 12-week small-group intervention. The classroom-based supplemental curriculum did not produce statistically significant gains for typically achieving children on measures of letter–sound knowledge, word recognition, or developmental spelling. However, an add-on tier of supplemental instruction exerted a substantial advantage for low-achieving children on a measure of developmental spelling. Practice or Policy: Results suggest that a 2-tiered intervention model provides an effective means for improving the literacy outcomes of low-achieving kindergarten children.

Early home‐based intervention in the Netherlands for children at familial risk of dyslexia

Dutch children at higher familial risk of reading disability received a home-based intervention programme before formal reading instruction started to investigate whether this would reduce the risk of dyslexia. The experimental group (n=23) received a specific training in phoneme awareness and letter knowledge. A control group (n=25) received a non-specific training in morphology, syntax, and vocabulary. Both interventions were designed to take 10 min a day, 5 days a week for 10 weeks. Most parents were sufficiently able to work with the programme properly. At post-test the experimental group had gained more on phoneme awareness than the control group. The control group gained more on one of the morphology measures. On average, these specific training results did not lead to significant group differences in first-grade reading and spelling measures. However, fewer experimental children scored below 10th percentile on word recognition.

Modelling relations between sensory processing, speech perception, orthographic and phonological ability, and literacy achievement

The general magnocellular theory postulates that dyslexia is the consequence of a multimodal deficit in the processing of transient and dynamic stimuli. In the auditory modality, this deficit has been hypothesized to interfere with accurate speech perception, and subsequently disrupt the development of phonological and later reading and spelling skills. In the visual modality, an analogous problem might interfere with literacy development by affecting orthographic skills. In this prospective longitudinal study, we tested dynamic auditory and visual processing, speech-in-noise perception, phonological ability and orthographic ability in 62 five-year-old preschool children. Predictive relations towards first grade reading and spelling measures were explored and the validity of the global magnocellular model was evaluated using causal path analysis. In particular, we demonstrated that dynamic auditory processing was related to speech perception, which itself was related to phonological awareness. Similarly, dynamic visual processing was related to orthographic ability. Subsequently, phonological awareness, orthographic ability and verbal short-term memory were unique predictors of reading and spelling development.

On the benefits of bi-literacy: just a head start in reading or specific orthographic insights?

In a previous study [Schwartz et al. (2005). Written Language and Literacy, 8, 179–207] we showed that early literacy in Russian (L1) facilitated decoding acquisition in Hebrew (L2) among Russian-Hebrew first graders. The present study examined two alternative explanations for this finding. The first account concerns the general benefits of an early start in literacy. The second relates to the specific meta-linguistic insights engendered by early exposure to a fully fledged orthography—Russian. We therefore compared two groups who had acquired literacy prior to the onset of schooling: bi-literate bilinguals (Russian L1 literates and Hebrew L2 learners) (n = 26) and early-literacy monolinguals (Hebrew-speaking monolinguals) (n = 18). The research was conducted in two stages. First, linguistic, meta-linguistic and cognitive tasks in Hebrew were administered to all children and in Russian to the bilinguals at the beginning of the first grade. Next, reading and writing skills in Hebrew were assessed at the end of the first grade. Bi-literate bilinguals showed superior levels of phonological awareness on an initial phoneme isolation task in Hebrew compared to other three groups. In addition, the bi-literate bilinguals were found to be superior to the early-literacy monolinguals on measures of word and pseudoword accuracy, which are known to depend heavily on phonological processing efficiency, but not on fluency and spelling measures, which are more reliant on stored orthographic information. This pattern of outcomes was attributed to the facilitating effects of an orthography characterized by a fully fledged alphabet, in contrast to Hebrew’s primarily consonantal orthography, as well as the complex syllabic structure of Russian.

Tier 3 specialized writing instruction for students with dyslexia

Two instructional experiments used randomized, controlled designs to evaluate the effectiveness of writing instruction for students with carefully diagnosed dyslexia, which is both an oral reading and writing disorder, characterized by impaired word decoding, reading, and spelling. In Study 1 (4th to 6th grade sample and 7th to 9th grade sample), students were randomly assigned to orthographic or morphological spelling treatment but all students were taught strategies for planning, writing, and reviewing/revising narrative and expository texts. Both treatments resulted in improvement on three measures of spelling and one measure of composition. Morphological treatment resulted in better improvement in spelling pseudowords, whereas orthographic treatment resulted in better improvement in rate of reading pseudowords. In Study 2 (4th to 6th grade sample), students were randomly assigned to explicit language treatment (phonological working memory + phonological-orthographic spelling + science report writing training) or nonverbal problem solving treatment (virtual reality-based computer simulation, drawing maps, and building clay models). Both treatments used science content material and resulted in significant improvement in spelling and reading pseudowords (accuracy and rate). The surprising finding was that hands-on, engaging science problem solving led to more improvement in phonological working memory than did specialized phonological instruction. Only when spelling instruction emphasized orthography or morphology (Study 1) did real word spelling improve.

Student- and instruction-level predictors of narrative writing in third-grade students

This study examined the student-level and instruction-level predictors of narrative writing fluency and quality. Participants included 120 third-grade students from 13 classrooms. Student predictors included measures of reading, handwriting, spelling, IQ, grammatical understanding, and gender. Instructional predictors focused on the amount of time allocated to teaching basic writing skills and planning skills. Significant predictors of compositional fluency included gender, advanced planning ability, and handwriting fluency, while significant predictors of compositional quality included gender, compositional fluency, Full-scale IQ, word reading ability, and grammatical understanding. There were no main effects of instructional variables; however there were two student by instruction interactions. Implications of the study highlight the importance of student characteristics in writing achievement, as well as considering the need for differential instruction based on student needs.

Is the Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale Measuring Anxiety or Language Skills?

Fifty‐four students were followed over 10 years and tested with native language measures in first through fifth grades and measures of foreign language aptitude and foreign language proficiency in high school. All students had completed two years of Spanish, French, or German. Students were divided into three groups based on their scores on the Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale (FLCAS). Findings showed that the low anxious group scored significantly higher than the high anxious group on all native language measures beginning in second grade. The low anxious group scored significantly higher than the high anxious group on all measures of foreign language proficiency and foreign language aptitude, and also achieved higher foreign language course grades. Few differences were found between the low anxious and average anxious groups on the native language and foreign language testing measures. Findings also showed that the FLCAS was negatively correlated with native language measures of reading, spelling, and vocabulary as early as the beginning of first grade. The results suggest that the FLCAS is likely to be measuring students' perceptions of their language learning skills, and that language skills are likely to be a confounding variable in the findings of researchers who suggest that anxiety plays a primary role in foreign language proficiency and achievement.

Speech and Language Skills of Parents of Children With Speech Sound Disorders

This study compared parents with histories of speech sound disorders (SSD) to parents without known histories on measures of speech sound production, phonological processing, language, reading, and spelling. Familial aggregation for speech and language disorders was also examined. The participants were 147 parents of children with SSD (58 fathers and 89 mothers) who were directly tested and interviewed for family history of disorders. Thirty-six parents (18 mothers and 18 fathers) reported enrollment in speech therapy as children for SSD. Parents with a history of speech therapy obtained lower scores on the Multisyllabic Word Repetition, Nonword Repetition, and Tongue Twister tasks than parents without such histories. These parents also had poorer reading, spelling, and receptive language skills. Parents with histories of SSD and additional language impairments (LI) performed worse than parents with isolated SSD on all measures except Pig Latin and oral motor skills. Familial aggregation for SSD and LI was supported. In addition, the likelihood of SSD in a family member increased by a factor of 1.9 over rates of SSD found in individuals without additional family members with SSD, and the odds of LI increased by a factor of 4.1 over rates of LI found in individuals without additional family members with LI for each additional family member with SSD or LI, respectively. The results documented both residual effects in adulthood of childhood SSD and familial aggregation for SSD. These residual difficulties do not appear to affect educational and occupational outcomes.

African American English dialect and performance on nonword spelling and phonemic awareness tasks.

To evaluate the role of dialect on phonemic awareness and nonword spelling tasks. These tasks were selected for their reliance on phonological and orthographic processing, which may be influenced by dialect use. Eighty typically developing African American children in Grades 1 and 3 were first screened for dialect use and then completed a standardized test of phonological processing and a nonword spelling measure. The influence of dialect was analyzed in both experimental tasks, followed by a qualitative analysis of dialect use in nonword spellings. Dialect density measures based solely on the use of African American English (AAE) phonological features explained few differences in phonological processing scores. In contrast, correlations indicated that children with higher dialect densities produced more nonword spelling errors influenced by AAE, an effect most evident in Grade 3. Qualitative analyses revealed AAE phonological features occurring in many of the misspelled nonwords. After Grade 2, nonword spelling may be more sensitive to the effects of dialect variation than are phonemic awareness tasks. It is suggested that spelling may be a more sensitive clinical indicator of difficulties in integrating the phonological and orthographic information needed for fluent decoding skill.

Young children at risk of literacy difficulties: factors predicting recovery from risk following phonologically based intervention

This longitudinal project identified young children at risk of literacy difficulties and asked why some of these children fail to benefit from phonologically based intervention. Reception class children were screened to identify a group at risk of literacy difficulties and a matched group of children not at risk. Profiles were compiled for each child including measures of reading, spelling, memory, rapid naming, vocabulary and phonological awareness. A daily, 15‐week, small group intervention was implemented with 67 at‐risk children. Those who had not made progress in their literacy following this intervention participated in a second, individually administered intervention. The results indicate that letter knowledge and expressive vocabulary are key factors mediating a child's ability to benefit from a phonologically based intervention. Findings are discussed in the context of a lexical restructuring account of the development of spoken word recognition.

Genetic and Environmental Influences on Word Recognition and Spelling Deficits as a Function of Age

Previous twin studies have suggested a possible developmental dissociation between genetic influences on word recognition and spelling deficits, wherein genetic influence declined across age for word recognition, and increased for spelling recognition. The present study included two measures of word recognition (timed, untimed) and two measures of spelling (recognition, production) in younger and older twins. The heritability estimates for the two word recognition measures were .65 (timed) and .64 (untimed) in the younger group and .65 and .58 respectively in the older group. For spelling, the corresponding estimates were .57 (recognition) and .51 (production) in the younger group and .65 and .67 in the older group. Although these age group differences were not significant, the pattern of decline in heritability across age for reading and increase for spelling conformed to that predicted by the developmental dissociation hypothesis. However, the tests for an interaction between genetic influences on word recognition and spelling deficits as a function of age were not significant.

Phonological but not auditory discrimination is impaired in dyslexia

Deficient phonological skills are considered to be a core problem in developmental dyslexia. Children with dyslexia often demonstrate poorer performance than non-impaired readers when categorizing speech-sounds. Using the automatic mismatch response, we show that in contrast to this deficit at the behavioural level, neurophysiological responding in dyslexic children indicates their ability to automatically discriminate syllables. Therefore, the phonological deficit is unlikely to be caused by a temporal deficit or by a noisy functional organization in the respective representational cortex. We obtained measures of reading, spelling and categorical speech-perception from 58 dyslexic children and 21 control children. The children also participated in magnetoencephalographic measurements while being stimulated acoustically with the syllables /ba/ and /da/ in an oddball paradigm. Mismatch field (MMF) amplitudes between standard and deviant stimuli were obtained. Dyslexic children performed more poorly than control children on all test measures. However, the groups did not differ in MMF amplitude or latency. No correlations were found between MMF amplitudes and behavioural performance. These results were obtained with a large sample size and thus speak robustly against a general deficit in auditory discrimination in dyslexia. These results are compatible with the idea that decoding difficulties occur later in the processing stream where access to the phonological lexicon is attempted.

The Effects of Computer-Assisted Instruction on Number Combination Skill in At-Risk First Graders

The purpose of this pilot study was to assess the potential for computer-assisted instruction (CAI) to enhance number combination skill among children with concurrent risk for math disability and reading disability. A secondary purpose was to examine the effects of CAI on spelling. At-risk students were assigned randomly to math or spelling CAI, which they received in 50 sessions over 18 weeks. Acquisition and transfer effects were assessed. The results indicated that math CAI was effective in promoting addition but not subtraction number combination skill and that transfer to arithmetic story problems did not occur. Spelling CAI effects were reliable on acquisition and transfer spelling measures, with small to moderate effect sizes on transfer to reading measures. These results provide the basis for additional work with larger samples.

The Development of the English Developmental Contrastive Spelling Test: A Tool for Investigating Spanish Influence on English Spelling Development

This article describes the development of an English spelling measure designed to assess the progress made by Spanish-English bilingual children from Grade 2 to Grade 5. Different stages of developing the measure are described, such as selecting the focus features, the prepilot and pilot phases, and the operational version. Two underlying attributes characterize the spelling measure described in this article. First, it is developmental, meaning that it contains a wide variety of features and items that differ according to spelling difficulty, such that the assessment is able to measure the growth of English spelling ability over the full sequence of the upper elementary grades. Second, it is contrastive; that is, it was designed to detect some areas of potential cross-linguistic influence from Spanish to English. The combination of these two characteristics makes this spelling measure a unique tool for assessing the development of spelling ability by Spanish-English bilingual children.

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

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.

Effectiveness of a Spanish Intervention and an English Intervention for English-Language Learners at Risk for Reading Problems

Two studies of Grade 1 reading interventions for English-language (EL) learners at risk for reading problems were conducted. Two samples of EL students were randomly assigned to a treatment or untreated comparison group on the basis of their language of instruction for core reading (i.e., Spanish or English). In all, 91 students completed the English study (43 treatment and 48 comparison), and 80 students completed the Spanish study (35 treatment and 45 comparison). Treatment students received approximately 115 sessions of supplemental reading daily for 50 minutes in groups of 3 to 5. Findings from the English study revealed statistically significant differences in favor of treatment students on English measures of phonological awareness, word attack, word reading, and spelling (effect sizes of 0.35–0.42). Findings from the Spanish study revealed significant differences in favor of treatment students on Spanish measures of phonological awareness, letter-sound and letter-word identification, verbal analogies, word reading fluency, and spelling (effect sizes of 0.33–0.81).

The Spanish Developmental Contrastive Spelling Test: An Instrument for Investigating Intra-Linguistic and Crosslinguistic Influences on Spanish-Spelling Development

This article describes the development of a Spanish-spelling measure designed to assess the progress made by Spanish-English bilingual children from Grade 2 to Grade 5. Different stages of measure development are described, such as the selection of the focus features, the pilot phase of the assessment, and the finalizing of the operational version. Two underlying attributes characterize the spelling measure described here. First, it is developmental, meaning that it contains a wide variety of features and items that differ according to spelling difficulty, such that the assessment is able to measure the growth of Spanish-spelling ability over the full sequence of the upper elementary grades. Second, it is contrastive, as it was designed to detect some areas of potential crosslinguistic influence from English to Spanish. The combination of these two characteristics makes this spelling measure a unique tool for assessing the development of spelling ability by Spanish-English bilingual children.

Neural Basis for Dyslexia and Picture Naming Deficits

Eight dyslexic subjects, aged 20 +/-0.9 years, university students who were impaired on measures of reading, spelling and naming speed, matched for age and general ability with 10 control subjects, were scanned using PET while reading words and naming pictures, in a study at the Institute of Psychiatry, University College, and the Institute of Neurology, London, UK.

More than words: a common neural basis for reading and naming deficits in developmental dyslexia?

Dyslexic individuals show subtle impairments in naming pictures of objects in addition to their difficulties with reading. The present study investigated whether word reading and picture naming deficits in developmental dyslexia can be reduced to a common neurological impairment. Eight dyslexic subjects, impaired on measures of reading, spelling and naming speed, were matched for age and general ability with 10 control subjects. Participants were scanned using PET during two experimental conditions: reading words and naming pictures in the form of corresponding line drawings. In addition, two high-level baseline conditions were used to control for visual and articulatory processes. Relative to the control group, the dyslexic participants showed reduced activation in a left occipitotemporal area during both word reading and picture naming. This was the case even in the context of intact behavioural performance during scanning. Abnormal activation in this region, as reported previously for reading, is therefore not specific to orthographic decoding but may reflect a more general impairment in integrating phonology and visual information. Our investigation points to a common neurological basis for deficits in word reading and picture naming in developmental dyslexia.

General intelligence and reading performance in adults: is the genetic factor structure the same as for children?

Genetic and environmental influences on reading ability and disability in children are undergoing active exploration, but the same is not true for adults. This study made use of data from the Minnesota Study of Twins Reared Apart ( N = 239, age range 18–79) to evaluate whether a basic model of genetic and environmental influences on general intelligence and reading performance in children ( Brooks, Fulker, & DeFries, 1990) appeared to fit adult data. In addition, we developed a related model of the phenotypic relationships that better fit our adult data. The key difference in our phenotypic model was that our measure of reading comprehension was linked with general intelligence rather than with reading performance. We believe that, though automaticity in reading performance is associated with improved reading comprehension in children, this may not be true in adults and may help to explain our result. In addition, we estimated somewhat higher heritabilities for reading measures than have typically been found for children (0.77 and 0.74 for two measures of word recognition, 0.51 for a measure of reading comprehension, and 0.76 for a measure of spelling), along with a genetic correlation between general intelligence and reading performance of 0.68.