Processing of Phonological Representations and Adult Spelling Proficiency

Abstract

In Experiment 1, good and poor spellers in a sample of university students differed most markedly in pronunciation accuracy on highly irregular words, and spelling ability was strongly associated with pronunciation accuracy for recently studied unfamiliar words. In Experiment 2, students named recently studied, unfamiliar words and matched familiar controls, named nonwords, and recalled six-item-sequences of visually and aurally presented consonants. Accuracy at nonword pronunciation was the primary predictor of spelling after nonverbal intelligence was controlled. Ability to reproduce unfamiliar-word pronunciations did not improve the contribution made by the other predictors of Experiment 2. The results are consistent with the importance in spelling of well-established representations of words for fluent retrieval of pronunciation and meaning. In addition, they support a major role in spelling of facility with producing phonological codes for visually presented, word-like letter strings.