THE DEVELOPMENT OF SPELLING PROCEDURES IN FRENCH-SPEAKING, NORMAL ANDREADING-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 spe ll frequent and infrequent words containing either inconsistent nondom inant graphonemes (e.g., /s/ spelled ''c'' as in ''cigarette,'' the do minant spelling for /s/ being ''s'') or consistent context dependent g raphonemes (e.g., /g/ followed by ''i'' --> ''gu'') as well as pseudo- words including inconsistent graphonemes presented in different phonol ogical contexts (e.g., isi can be spelled ''s'' or ''c'' if the follow ing 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 acc ount in applying rules were observed only in the normal group. As read ing ability progresses, the effects of both word frequency and context ual constraints to rule application increase. Those phenomena were wea ker in reading-disabled than in normal readers. It is suggested that d isabled readers could use partial cues that allow reading but do not s upply complete representations of words to the orthographic lexicon. ( C) 1996 Academic Press, Inc.