Word and pseudoword reading are related abilities fundamental to reading development in alphabetic orthographies. They are respectively assumed to index children’s orthographic representations of ...words, which are in turn acquired through the underlying “self-teaching mechanism” of alphabetic pseudoword decoding. Little is known about concurrent growth trajectories of these skills in the early grades among children learning different alphabetic orthographies. In the present study, between- and within-group latent growth models of word and pseudoword reading efficiency were tested on data spanning Grades 1 and 2 from learners of the inconsistent English and consistent Czech and Slovak orthographies. Several language-general patterns emerged. Significant growth was observed for both skills in all languages. Growth was faster for word than pseudoword reading efficiency, and strong lexicality effects that increased over time were obtained across languages. Language-specific patterns were also found. In line with predictions about the costs of learning lower-consistency orthographies, readers of English experienced relatively slower growth on both reading skills. However, their lag was smaller, and evident only at the latter two time points for word reading. In contrast, on pseudoword reading, the English group performed considerably less well than their Czech and Slovak peers at every time point. Thus, weaker decoding skills were the main contributor to the larger lexicality effects of the English group. These findings are considered within the frame of recent theorizing about the effect of orthographic consistency on decoding as a self-teaching mechanism in alphabetic reading acquisition.
Spelling and handwriting are related skills which are critical for writing but are typically assessed separately. Doing so makes it more difficult to understand their respective development. We ...describe the creation and evaluation of a tool for their concurrent assessment: the Spelling and Handwriting Legibility Test (SaHLT). We examined whether (a) sentence spelling and handwriting legibility could be reliable and valid, independent measures of English spelling and handwriting legibility and (b) whether spelling and handwriting legibility can be measured concurrently. A total of 1461 primary-aged children (
M
age
= 9.14 years-old, SD = 12.80) completed the SaHLT and background tests. The SaHLT was a sensitive, reliable, and valid measure of spelling and handwriting. Multi-group factor analyses revealed the test to be a robust concurrent measure. The SaHLT offers a cost and time saving method of measuring two key skills of writing. This is important for assessments in practice and for furthering our understanding of the relationship between spelling and handwriting.
There is a high prevalence of comorbidity between neurodevelopmental disorders. Contemporary research of these comorbidities has led to the development of multifactorial theories of causation, ...including the multiple deficit model (MDM). While several combinations of disorders have been investigated, the nature of association between literacy and motor disorders remains poorly understood. Comorbid literacy and motor disorders were the focus of the two present studies. In Study 1, we examined the prevalence of comorbid literacy and motor difficulties relative to isolated literacy and motor difficulties in a community sample (
= 605). The prevalence of comorbidity was five times greater than expected by chance alone, implying some relationship between difficulties. In Study 2, we examined the cognitive profiles of children with literacy and motor disorders amongst a subsample of children from Study 1 (
= 153). Children with literacy disorder had deficits in phonological processing, selective attention, and memory whilst children with motor disorder had deficits in visuospatial processing and memory, suggesting the disorders should be considered to have both independent and shared (memory) cognitive risk factors. Children with comorbid literacy and motor disorder demonstrated an additive combination of these deficits. Together, these findings are consistent with predictions from the MDM.
•Handwriting legibility and fluency should be considered as separable constructs.•Graphomotor skills are a stronger predictor than spelling of legibility.•Spelling skills are a stronger predictor ...than graphomotor skills of fluency.•Relations between handwriting and correlates are similar in 8-to 10-year-olds.
Recent research suggests that handwriting comprises two separate sub-skills, legibility and fluency. It remains unclear, however, how these sub-skills differ in their relationship to other abilities associated with handwriting including spelling, graphomotor skills, and selective attention. In this study, we sought to examine the extent and nature of concurrent relationships that may exist among these skills. Children in Years 3 (n = 293), 4 (n = 291), and 5 (n = 283) completed a large, group-administered battery to assess each of the above skills. Using multigroup SEM, we found that spelling, graphomotor skills, and selective attention together explained a moderate amount of variance in handwriting legibility (R2=.37–.42) and fluency (R2=.41–.58) and that these sub-skills differed in their concurrent relations. Graphomotor skills accounted for a relatively greater proportion of variance in legibility than did spelling. Conversely, there were relatively stronger contributions from variations in spelling ability to variations in fluency than from graphomotor skills. Furthermore, selective attention predicted handwriting fluency only, and it partially mediated the influence of graphomotor skills. This study further demonstrates that handwriting legibility and fluency are separable and complex skills, each differentially related to spelling, motor, and attentional abilities even in later primary school years.
All alphabetic orthographies use letters in printed words to represent the phonemes in spoken words, but they differ in the consistency of the relationship between letters and phonemes. English ...appears to be the least consistent alphabetic orthography phonologically, and, consequently, children learn to read more slowly in English than in languages with more consistent orthographies. In this article, we report the first longitudinal evidence that the growth of reading skills is slower and follows a different trajectory in English than in two much more consistent orthographies (Spanish and Czech). Nevertheless, phoneme awareness, letter-sound knowledge, and rapid automatized naming measured at the onset of literacy instruction did not differ in importance as predictors of variations in reading development among the three languages. These findings suggest that although children may learn to read more rapidly in more consistent than in less consistent orthographies, there may nevertheless be universal cognitive prerequisites for learning to read in all alphabetic orthographies.
Previous studies have shown that phoneme awareness, letter-sound knowledge, rapid automatized naming (RAN), and verbal memory span are reliable correlates of learning to read in English. However, the ...extent to which these different predictors have the same relative importance in different languages remains uncertain. In this article, we present the results from a 10-month longitudinal study that began just before or soon after the start of formal literacy instruction in four languages (English, Spanish, Slovak, and Czech). Longitudinal path analyses showed that phoneme awareness, letter-sound knowledge, and RAN (but not verbal memory span) measured at the onset of literacy instruction were reliable predictors, with similar relative importance, of later reading and spelling skills across the four languages. These data support the suggestion that in all alphabetic orthographies, phoneme awareness, letter-sound knowledge, and RAN may tap cognitive processes that are important for learning to read.
Studies of the relationship between spelling and handwriting concur that spelling skills influence the dynamic processes of handwriting. However, it remains unclear whether variations in spelling ...ability are related to variations in the legibility of handwriting, how important spelling skills are relative to the amount of handwriting experience afforded by an individual's age and number of years of schooling, or to what extent this relationship may be task- and orthography-specific. We investigated these questions in a study comparing spelling and handwriting legibility in a group of N = 127 Welsh-English bilingual children matched in age and number of years of schooling to a group of N = 127 English-monolingual children, as well as to a group of N = 127 younger, English monolingual children matched to the bilingual group in spelling ability. All groups completed the Spelling and Handwriting Legibility Test (SaHLT) and a broader battery of literacy measures. The bilingual children were found to have poorer handwriting legibility than same age peers, and in some cases, than their younger, spelling-ability peers, suggesting that spelling ability, more so than amount of handwriting experience and years of schooling impacts handwriting legibility. This was corroborated in a series of multi-group path models, where all children's handwriting was predicted by spelling ability more strongly than by age, and, the effect of spelling generalized across two different spelling tasks in all groups. Finally, bilingual children seemed to draw on general (Welsh) as well as on orthography-specific (English) knowledge when handwriting in English.
The current study explored statistical learning processes in the acquisition of orthographic knowledge in school-aged children and skilled adults. Learning of novel graphotactic constraints on the ...position and context of letter distributions was induced by means of a two-phase learning task adapted from Onishi, Chambers, and Fisher (Cognition, 83 (2002) B13–B23). Following incidental exposure to pattern-embedding stimuli in Phase 1, participants’ learning generalization was tested in Phase 2 with legality judgments about novel conforming/nonconforming word-like strings. Test phase performance was above chance, suggesting that both types of constraints were reliably learned even after relatively brief exposure. As hypothesized, signal detection theory d′ analyses confirmed that learning permissible letter positions (d′=0.97) was easier than permissible neighboring letter contexts (d′=0.19). Adults were more accurate than children in all but a strict analysis of the contextual constraints condition. Consistent with the statistical learning perspective in literacy, our results suggest that statistical learning mechanisms contribute to children’s and adults’ acquisition of knowledge about graphotactic constraints similar to those existing in their orthography.
Background
Children's spellings are often scored as correct or incorrect, but other measures may be better predictors of later spelling performance.
Method
We examined seven measures of spelling in ...Reception Year and Year 1 (5–6 years old) as predictors of performance on a standardised spelling test in Year 2 (age 7).
Results
Correctness was the best predictor of later spelling by the middle of Year 1, and it significantly outperformed a binary measure of phonological plausibility at the end of Reception Year. Nonbinary measures based on Levenshtein distance were significant predictors of later spelling in the middle of Reception Year and in children who produced no correct spellings. Some widely used scales performed less well with children who did not yet produce any correct spellings.
Conclusions
Nonbinary measures of spelling performance can predict later spelling performance but for a more restricted period than anticipated based on many theories.
Highlights
What is already known about this topic
Spelling is an important skill.
Some researchers have suggested that correctness is not a good measure of spelling performance for children in early primary grades.
What this paper adds
By age 6, correctness is a good predictor of later spelling performance.
Before this point, nonbinary measures based on Levenshtein distance are significant predictors.
Implications for theory, policy or practice
Knowledge of spelling conventions emerges early in the course of spelling development.
Children's knowledge of these conventions can be captured by correctness or computer‐scored nonbinary measures.
Early assessment of spelling can help to determine which children may go on to develop difficulties.
Writing development is understood to be a multidimensional task, heavily constrained by spelling in its early stages. However, most available evidence comes from studies with learners of the ...inconsistent English orthography, so our understanding of the nature of early writing could be highly biased. We explored writing dimensions in each language by assessing a series of text-based features in children’s texts between mid-Grade 1 to mid-Grade 2. Results revealed that two constructs, writing conventions and productivity, emerged in both languages, but the influence of orthographic consistency started to be evident in the later time points. Other constructs of text generation seemed to emerge later and were less stable over time. The article thus highlights the language-general underpinnings of early text-writing development and the impact of orthographic consistency; furthermore, it strengthens the view that some writing components develop before others. We discuss implications for the assessment of early written products.
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