Knowing what we don’t know: cognitive correlates of early spelling of different target types

Abstract

Although research on cognitive correlates of spelling has been conducted, these studies generally do not distinguish between different types of targets that need to be spelled. Arguably, the contributions of these skills differ for words opposed to pseudowords and for targets that can be spelled on the basis of phoneme-to-grapheme conversion (phonologically consistent) and those that cannot (phonologically inconsistent, relying on orthographic knowledge). We assessed these issues in early spelling. A total of 83 first graders and 58 second graders completed word and pseudoword dictation tasks, containing phonologically consistent and inconsistent items. They also completed tasks reflecting potential cognitive correlates of spelling: phoneme awareness, rapid automatized naming, visual attention span and word reading. Dictation outcomes demonstrated that more spelling errors were made in inconsistent than in consistent items. The effect of lexicality differed across grades: More errors were made in spelling words than pseudowords in Grade 1, whereas the opposite pattern was found in Grade 2. Phoneme awareness and rapid naming, but not visual attention span, were found to be significant correlates of spelling outcomes. However, the cognitive correlates captured only a limited amount of variance in spelling errors. Moreover, these effects mostly disappeared once word reading was entered as a predictor. These findings indicate that research into predictors of spelling should distinguish between words and pseudowords, consistent and inconsistent items, and should consider more spelling-based rather than reading-based correlates of spelling performance.