Clinical appraisal of spelling ability and its relationship to phonemic awareness (blending, segmenting, elision, and reversal), phonological memory,and reading in reading disabled, ADHD, and normal children

Seventy-eight 8-to-12-year-old children (34 Reading Disabled; 31 Attention- Deficit-Hyperactivity-Disordered; and 13 diagnosed normal controls) were gi ven a battery of tests including cognitive, linguistic, academic, phonemic awareness, and memory tests. As part of the academic battery an 8-point spe lling rating scale was developed (Rating Scale) that resulted in three diff erent scores which reliably discriminated among the three groups. Relations hips between phonemic awareness, phonological memory, reading and spelling were explored. Zero-order and second-order correlations were completed with indications that phonemic awareness tasks (elision, blending, reversal, an d segmenting) and phonological memory (WISC-III Digit Span) are significant ly correlated with reading decoding and spelling measures with slightly hig her correlations with the Rating Scale. Regression analyses resulted in a l arge proportion of the variance on reading and spelling tasks accounted for by phonemic awareness (particularly elision and reversal) and phonological memory. The Reading Disabled group was found to produce more errors that w ere phonetically inaccurate than the other two groups. The demand of spelli ng ten "error" words beyond the RD students' achievement level appeared to elicit greater weaknesses in their phonological recoding abilities than in those of the ADHD or normally achieving students.