LITERACY DEVELOPMENT AND VISUAL SEARCH : THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN READING AND SPELLING

Abstract

Reading development is well-researched on but spelling has attracted less attention, and even fewer studies have looked at the relationship between reading and spelling. This study employs the visual search paradigm to investigate letter position effects in both reading and spelling in young (Primary 4) readers and spellers, and extends prior research by examining the relationship between position-specific spelling accuracy and spelling at the word level. Visual search results from reading and spelling showed that the participants were sensitive to initial letter effects, but spelling was found to be a better predictor of phonological awareness as it was also sensitive to end-letter effects. Trend analyses revealed that the participants employed both top-down and bottom-up lexical access processing during the visual search task. An analysis of position-specific spelling accuracy further showed that spelling accuracy at each of the five letter positions of the CVCVC words used was capable of predicting the spelling ability of a child. As hypothesised, children were most accurate at position one consonant for spelling. This study found that the onset-rime awareness is a critical phase in the attainment of phonological awareness. Thus, pedagogical methods should be tailored to facilitate this development.