title: The development of phonological rules and visual strategies in average and poor spellers.
abstract: To investigate the development of phonological and visual skills used in spelling, 420 children between the ages of 6 and 16 completed the spelling dictation test of the Wide Range Achievement Test-Revised. The misspellings were scored for phonological as well as visual accuracy using a constrained (inclusion of position cues) and an unconstrained system. Poor spellers made fewer phonologically accurate and fewer visual matches than age-matched average spellers. Poor spellers produced significantly more misspellings that were close visual matches to the target word and fewer phonologically unconstrained misspellings than spelling grade-matched average spellers. The groups did not differ in their production of phonologically constrained misspellings. Average spellers used a phonological approach more frequently than a visual approach, while the reverse pattern was true for poor spellers. When phonological rules are less well developed, then individuals are more likely to use orthographic skills.
authors.affiliation: Peel Board of Education, Mississauga, Ontario, Canada.
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Lennox
authors.forename: L S
authors.initials: LS
authors.lastname: Siegel
mesh_terms: D000124:Achievement; D000293:Adolescent; D001288:Attention; D002648:Child; D002657:Child Development; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011939:Mental Recall; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual; D010700:Phonetics; D011932:Reading; D014706:Verbal Learning