The transfer of reading to spelling in adolescents with specific spelling disability

Abstract

The specific spelling disabled are a small group of individuals who have a learning disability that is evident in their written language production (that is, poor spelling), but not in their reading. Since reading is one way of acquiring knowledge of word spellings, it may be that a source of their specific spelling difficulty lies in the transfer processes from reading experience to spelling performance. Furthermore, they may experience more difficulty with transferring low spelling regularity words than high spelling regularity words from their reading experience. This study investigated whether there is any positive transfer for low and high spelling regularity words for the specific spelling disabled. Comparisons were made with the performance of reading-level matched normal spellers by using transfer tasks in which reading exposure was given to the training target words in sentence contexts. A spelling post-test of the training target words was given to test for any transfer from this exposure to spelling performance. A set of control words, to which no reading exposure was given, was included in the spelling post-test. Findings indicated that there was no positive transfer for either types of spelling regularity words for the specific spelling disabled and small positive transfer of high spelling regularity target words for the normal spellers. The study also examined whether the specific spelling disabled have as much ability as normal spellers at phonological recoding when reading unfamiliar words. A comparison was made of the performance of both groups for the reading of single-, two-, three- and four-syllable nonwords that contained varying degrees of letter-sound regularity; the single-, three- and four-syllable nonwords contained complex long vowel structures whilst the two-syllable nonwords contained a simple CVCCVC consonant-vowel structure with short vowels sounds. Findings indicated that the specific spelling disabled produced less regular responses to the single-, three- and four-syllable nonwords than the normal spellers. There was no significant difference between the groups for the two-syllable words. It appears that the specific spelling disabled have an underlying phonological recoding difficulty that is revealed in their spelling but not in their reading. This may be a contributing factor in the lack of transfer from reading experience to spelling performance.