Thesis--Wisconsin. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 28-30).

Few studies have investigated the differences between poor readers/poor spellers (SRD) and good readers who demonstrate unexpectedly poor spelling skills (SSD). Those that have done so have been mainly concerned with searching for psycholinguistic similarities and differences. This dissertation project is believed to be the first comparison of the two disorders on a task that did not involve the use of alphanumeric stimuli. From a review of neuropsychological and language arts research into reading and spelling failure, it was hypothesized that both SSD and SRD might be differentiated from good reader/superior spellers (GRS) by their responses to a line orientation task which had been proven to be a valid indicator of right hemisphere function. A previous study had found that this task, presented concurrently with right or left hand tapping, discriminated between good and poor Native Indian readers (Stellern, Collins, Cossairt & Gutierrez, 1986). The theoretical underpinning of the current study suggested that these results may have been more closely related to spelling than reading ability. Empirical support for this hypothesis was sought by comparing the performance of SSD, SRD and GRS early adolescents on the concurrent tapping-line orientation judgement task. The data supported this hypothesis in that the SSD and SRD groups differed from the GRS group in demonstrating significantly more tapping interference in the right hand condition. Unexpectedly, however, all three groups performed similarly with respect to rate and accuracy in judging line orientation. As these results were ambiguous as to whether the right hand tapping interference experienced by the poor spellers was the result of differences in hemisphere processing of spatial stimuli, other possible explanations are considered in the discussion. / Graduate

M.Ed. / Please refer to full text to view abstract

Current literature on spelling strategies has indicated that successful spellers use phonological and morphological information as well as graphemic memory in their spelling. Research into spelling disorders has uncovered two broad categories of poor spellers: Phonetically Inaccurate spellers, whose spelling errors are phonetically unrelated to the target and who also exhibit a generalized language impairment and Phonetically Accurate spellers, whose errors are phonetically plausible and who have no obvious neurological impairment. This study intended to investigate some of the organizational and language abilities of those children known as Phonetically Accurate or Atrocious spellers. The hypothesis was that Atrocious spellers have inadequate knowledge of the phonological and morphological rules necessary for correct spelling. Three phonological processes were under examinations Palatalization, Velar Softening and Stress Shift, Test items incorporated one or more of these processes. Subjects performed three spelling tasks two written spelling tasks with oral presentation of the item and one spelling task without auditory model and three language tasks. The first, Suffixation, required subjects to pronounce real and nonsense words derived from a root word and affix. Subjects also judged relatedness of word pairs and learned nonsense words which either did or did not employ the target processes correctly. Because of the "partial cue" reading method employed by the subjects, it was impossible to determine their knowledge of phonology through the Suffixation task. However, the data gave rise to some interesting considerations. Review of the historical development of spelling suggested possible parallels between synchronic and diachronic development of spelling. Poor handwriting was linked to poor spelling and a rationale was proposed. Several instances of motor perseveration of writing were noted, suggesting that for these cases, the stimulus of the motor pattern was stronger than an auditory model. Some evidence for word recall problems appeared; a confrontation naming task would determine whether the incidence of word finding difficulties is higher in Atrocious spellers than in proficient spellers, Errors in affixation led to further questioning of subjects' morphological competence. Atrocious and good spellers employed a spelling strategy known as "sounding out" with varying degrees of proficiency. The question was then raised of how strongly spelling errors were influenced by the speller's dialect of spoken language. Most notably, nearly all test subjects favoured an auditory over a visual strategy when they were unsure of spelling. This translation from morpheme to phoneme string and then to grapheme string was felt to be developmentally an earlier stage than a direct translation from morpheme to grapheme. / Medicine, Faculty of / Audiology and Speech Sciences, School of / Graduate

This study proposes to examine the invented spelling patterns that Spanish speaking children create in their writing. Their writing samples were then transcribed and each word was categorized as either conventional or an invented spelling.