WHAT TYPES OF LINGUISTIC INFORMATION DO CHILDREN USE IN SPELLING - THE CASE OF FLAPS

We sought to determine what types of linguistic information children r epresent in their spelling by examining their performance on the flaps of words such as city and lady. In 4 experiments, children often miss pelled flaps as d. This d bias was common until at least second grade, with few children showing a bias toward t. We found no evidence that children have an underlying representation of city as containing /t/, for children said such words with /d/ when speaking very slowly. Even kindergartners were more accurate at spelling the flaps of words such as dirty, which have a stem ending with /t/, than the flaps of words s uch as city. Thus, children use meaning relations among words to aid t heir spelling before they have formally been taught to do so. The resu lts show that young children are not purely phonetic spellers as they are often portrayed. The results further suggest that phonology and or thography are closely related systems that interact during development .