Abstract
This research examined the effects of irregular spelling and irregular spelling-sound correspondences on word recognition in children and adults. Previous research has established that, among skilled readers, these irregularities influence the reading of only lower frequency words. However, this research involved the lexical decision and naming tasks, which differ from the demands of normal reading in important ways. In the present experiments, we compared performance on these tasks with that on a task requiring words to be recognized in sentence contexts. Results indicated that adults showed effects of spelling and spelling-sound irregularities in reading lower frequency words on all three tasks, whereas younger and poorer readers also showed effects on higher frequency words. The fact that irregular spelling-sound correspondences affected performance on the sentence task indicates that access of phonological information is not an artifact of having to read a word aloud or perform a lexical decision. Two other developmental trends were observed: As children became more skilled in reading, the effects of irregular spelling were overcome before the effects of irregular spelling-sound correspondences; the latter effects were eliminated on silent reading tasks earlier than on the naming task.
Article PDF
Similar content being viewed by others
Avoid common mistakes on your manuscript.
References
Backman, J., Bruck, M., Hebert, M., Seidenberg, M. S. (in press). Acquisition and use of spelling-sound correspondences in reading.Journal of Experimental Child Psychology.
Baddeley, A., Eldridge, M., &Lewis, V. (1981). The role of subvocalisation in reading.Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology,33A, 439–454.
Baeon, J., &Steawson, C. (1976). Use of orthographic and word-specific knowledge in reading of words aloud.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance,2, 386–393.
Barron, R. W., &Baron, J. (1977). How children get meaning from printed words.Child Development,48, 587–594.
Bauer, D. W., &Stanovich, K. E. (1980). Lexical access and the spelling-to-sound regularity effect.Memory & Cognition,8, 424–432.
Calfee, R. C., Venezky, R. L., & Chapman, R. S. (1969).Pronunciation of synthetic words with predictable and unpredict. able letter-sound correspondences (Tech. Rep. No. 71). Wisconsin Research and Development Center for Cognitive Learning.
Carroll, J., Davies, P., &Richman, B. (1971).The American Heritage word frequency book. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
Coltheart, M. (1978). Lexical access in simple reading tasks. In G. Underwood (Ed.),Strategies of information processing. London: Academic Press.
Coltheart, M., Besner, D., Jonasson, J. T., &Davelaar, E. (1979). Phonological recoding in the lexical decision task.Quarerly Journal of Experimental Psychology,31, 489–507.
Condry, S. M., McMahon-Rideout, M., &Levy, A. A. (1979). A developmental investigation of selective attention to graphic, phonetic, and semantic information in words.Perception & Psychophysics,25, 88–94.
Conrad, R. (1979).The deaf school child. London: Harper & Row.
Doctor, E. A., &Coltheart, M. (1980). Children’s use of phonological encoding when reading for meaning.Memory & Cognition,8, 195–209.
Edfeelt, A. W. (1959).Silent speech and silent reading. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell.
Glustko, R. J. (1979). The organization and activation of orthographic knowledge in reading aloud.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance,5, 674–691.
Gought, P., &Cosky, M. (1977). One second of reading again. In N. Castellan, D. Pisoni, & G. Potts (Eds.),Cognitive theory (Vol. 2). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Henderson, L. (1982).Orthography and word recognition in reading. London: Academic Press.
Hung, D. L., &Tzeng, O. J. L. (1981). Orthographic variations and visual information processing.Psychological Bulletin,90, 377–414.
Jorm, A. F., &Share, D. L. (1983). Phonological recoding and reading acquisition.Applied Psycholinguistics,4, 103–147.
Katz, L., &Feldman, L. B. (1981). Linguistic coding in word recognition: Comparisons between a deep and a shallow orthography. In A. M. Lesgold & C. A. Perfetti (Eds.),Interactive processes in reading. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Lichtenstein, E. H. (1983).The relationship between reading processes and English skills of deaf college students. Unpublished manuscript.
MoClellamd, J., &Rumelhart, D. (1981). An interactiveactivation model of context effects in letter perception, Part 1: An account of basic findings.Psychological Review,85, 375–407.
McCusker, L. X., Hillinger, M. L., &Bias, R. G. (1981). Phonological recoding and reading.Psychological Bulletin,89, 217–245.
Myers, J. L. (1972).Fundamentals of experimental design. Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon.
Parkin, A. J. (1982). Phonological recoding in lexical decision: Effects of spelling-to-sound regularity depends upon how regularity is defined.Memory & Cognition,10, 43–53.
Perfetti, C. A., &Hogaboam, T. (1975). Relationship between single word decoding and reading comprehension skill.Journal of Educational Psychology,67, 461–469.
Rader, N. (1975).From written words to meaning: A developmental study. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY.
Reed, A. V. (1979). Microcomputer display timing: Problems and solutions.Behavior Research Methods & Instrumentation,11, 572–576.
Rozin, P., &Gleitman, L. (1977). The structure and acquisition of reading II: The reading process and the acquisition of the alphabetic principle. In A. Reber & D. Scarborough (Eds.),Towards a psychology of reading. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Seidenberg, M. S. (in press). The time course of phonological code activation in two writing systems.Cognition.
Seidenberg, M. S., Waters, G. S., Barnes, M., & Tanenhaus, M. (in press). When does irregular spelling or pronunciation influence word recognition.Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior.
Shankweller, D., &Liberman, I. Y. (1972). Misreading: A search for causes. In J. Kavanaugh & I. Mattingiy (Eds.),Language by ear and by eye. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Slowiaczek, M., &Clifton, C. (1980). Sub-vocalization and reading for meaning.Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior,19, 573–582.
Stanovich, K. E., &Bauer, D. (1978). Experiments on the spelling-to-sound regularity effect in word recognition.Memory & Cognition,6, 410–415.
Treiman, R., Freyd, J. J., &Baron, J. (1984). Phonological Recoding and use of spelling—sound rules in reading of sentences.Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior,22, 682–700.
Venezky, R. L. (1970).The structure of English orthography. The Hague: Mouton.
Venezky, R. L. (1976).Theoretical and experimental bases for teaching reading. The Hague: Mouton.
Venezky, R. L., & Johnson, D. (1972).The development of two-letter sound patterns in grades 1–3 (Tech. Rep. No. 189). Wisconsin Research and Development Center for Cognitive Learning.
Waters, G. S., BrucK, M., & Seidenberg, M. S. (1983, June).Children’s use of spelling-sound information in reading and spelling. Paper presented at the World Congress on Dyslexia, Halkidiki, Greece
Waters, G. S., & Seidenberg, M. S. (1984, May).Spelling-sound effects in reading: Time course and decision criteria. Paper presented at the meeting of the Canadian Psychological Association, Ottawa, Canada.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Additional information
This research was funded by Grants A7924 and A8325 from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, Grant EQ-2074 from the Quebec Ministry of Education, and a grant from the McGill-Montreal Children’s Hospital Research Institute. Gloria Waters, who is also at the School of Human Communication Disorders, was supported by a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada postdoctoral fellowship. Margaret Bruck was supported by a National Health Scholar award granted by the National Health and Welfare Research development program. Parts of Experiment 1 were completed by Joy Etcovitch as an undergraduate honors thesis. Gaff Fornarolo, Helene Lamoureux, and Elizabeth Prorok assisted in running the experiments and data analyses. Michael Tanenhaus provided helpful discussions concerning the lexical decision task
Steven W. Keele served as Action Editor for this manuscript.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Waters, G.S., Seidenberg, M.S. & Bruck, M. Children’s and adults’ use of spelling-sound information in three reading tasks. Memory & Cognition 12, 293–305 (1984). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03197678
Received:
Accepted:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03197678