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In two experiments, serial order recall of short lists of content and function words under quiet and articulatory suppression conditions was examined in order to assess the hypotheses that (1) semantic attributes of words contribute to short-term-memory performance, and (2) do so independently of effects attributable to the articulatory loop component. In Experiment 1, content words were better recalled than function words; both word types were equally impaired by suppression. This provides support for the notion that semantic coding makes an independent contribution to span performance. This word-class effect disappeared in Experiment 2, when content and function words were matched for imageability. These data suggest that at least some aspects of meaning contribute to serial order recall performance for short lists, independently of the articulatory loop.

We examined the oral and written spelling performance on the Treiman-Bourassa Early Spelling Test (Treiman & Bourassa, 2000a) of 30 children with serious reading and spelling problems and 30 spelling-level-matched younger children who were progressing normally in learning to read and spell. The 2 groups' spellings were equivalent on a composite measure of phonological and orthographic sophistication, representation of the phonological skeleton of the items, and orthographic legality. The groups showed a similar advantage for words over nonwords on the phonological skeleton and orthographic legality measures. The children with dyslexia and the comparison children also showed an equivalent advantage for written over oral spelling on the composite and phonological skeleton measures. Further analyses revealed that children with dyslexia made many of the same linguistically based errors as typically developing children but also pointed to some subtle differences between the groups. Overall, the spelling performance of children with dyslexia appears to be quite similar to that of normally progressing younger children. Children with developmental dyslexia have great difficulty learning to read and write, despite normal intelligence, adequate learning opportunities, and no serious emotional or personality disorders. To illuminate the causes of these problems, re

For adults, written spelling is generally superior to oral spelling. To determine whether the same holds true for children in kindergarten through second grade, we compared children's ability to spell real words (Experiment 1) and nonsense words (Experiment 2) orally and in writing. Building on the work of Tangel and Blachman (1992, 1995) and others, we developed a reliable system to assess the overall quality of the children's spellings. We also examined the phonological and orthographic legality of the spellings. By first and second grade, written spellings were superior to oral spellings in both overall quality and representation of phonological form. This held true for both words and nonwords. The results suggest that children, like adults, more accurately analyze the linguistic structure of a spoken item when they can represent the results in a lasting, visible form than when they cannot.