The development of spelling procedures in French-speaking, normal and reading-disabled children: Effects of frequency and lexicality

The spelling procedures of normal and reading-disabled French-speaking children matched for reading level were examined. Subjects had to spell frequent and infrequent words containing either inconsistent nondominant graphonemes (e.g., /s/ spelled ''c'' as in ''cigarette,'' the dominant spelling for /s/ being ''s'') or consistent context dependent graphonemes (e.g., /g/ followed by ''i'' --> ''gu'') as well as pseudo-words including inconsistent graphonemes presented in different phonological contexts (e.g., isi can be spelled ''s'' or ''c'' if the following vowel is /i/, but ''c'' is incorrect if the following vowel is /y/). At the lowest reading level, frequency effects were totally absent in both groups of children. Also, signs of taking the context into account in applying rules were observed only in the normal group. As reading ability progresses, the effects of both word frequency and contextual constraints to rule application increase. Those phenomena were weaker in reading-disabled than in normal readers. It is suggested that disabled readers could use partial cues that allow reading but do not supply complete representations of words to the orthographic lexicon. (C) 1996 Academic Press, Inc.