Spelling acquisition in a transparent orthography

BORZONE, A. M.; SÁNCHEZ ABCHI, V.; DIUK, B. Y FERRONI, M.

Praga - República Checa

Congreso; Fourteenth Annual Meeting Society for the Scientific Study of Reading; 2007

Society for the Scientific Study of Reading

The present study aims to explore the role played by the two basic spelling procedures – lexical and phonological – in second grade, Spanish-speaking children that were learning to write in a transparent orthographic system. Words with consistent and inconsistent correspondences were contrasted. In the consistent condition, correspondences were either contextually independent (for example, /p/ - <P>) or contextually dependent (/rr/ between vowels - <RR>). In the inconsistent condition, the target phoneme presented a dominant transcription (/b/ - <B>) and a nondominant one (/b/ -- <V>). The effect of word frequency on item spelling was also considered since this effect reflects the dependency (presence?) of lexical factors. An ANOVA was carried out comparing consistent and inconsistent conditions. The effect of consistency was significant: consistent correspondences were better spelled than inconsistent ones. No effect of frequency was observed. The comparison between context-dependent and context-independent consistent conditions yielded a significant effect of context. The context x frequency interaction was also significant: frequency affected spelling only in the context-dependent condition. In the inconsistent condition, no effects or dominance or of frequency were found. These results suggest that there are complex modes of interaction between the lexical and non-lexical procedures. The fact that children´s performance was better in the consistent than in the inconsistent conditions points to the use of spelling rules. However, the effect of frequency on context-dependent correspondences implies lexical involvement. These results are somewhat different from data obtained in deeper orthographies.