THE BEGINNINGS OF ORTHOGRAPHIC KNOWLEDGE - CHILDRENS KNOWLEDGE OF DOUBLE LETTERS IN WORDS

Three experiments were carried out to examine the development of knowl edge about double letters. Children and adults chose items they though t looked most word-like from pairs of nonwords. First graders chose no nwords with final doublets (e.g., baff) and allowable doublets (e.g., yill) as more word-like than nonwords with initial doublets (e.g., bba f) or unallowable doublets (e.g., yihh). Children in late kindergarten chose final-doublet nonwords (e.g., pess) more often than initial-dou blet nonwords (e.g., ppes), but performed at chance when choosing betw een items such as jull and jukk. The same children in ist grade chose jull more often than jukk even though their own spellings were semipho netic and phonetic according to stage theories of spelling development . Only participants in the 6th grade and above knew the correspondence between a medial doublet and a preceding short vowel (e.g., tebbif). The results suggest that even young writers know about simple orthogra phic patterns.