While the functional correlates of spelling impairment have been rarely investigated, to our knowledge no study exists regarding the structural characteristics of spelling impairment and potential changes with interventions. Using diffusion tensor imaging at 3.0 T, we here therefore sought to investigate (a) differences between children with poor spelling abilities (training group and waiting group) and controls, and (b) the effects of a morpheme-based spelling intervention in children with poor spelling abilities on DTI parameters. A baseline comparison of white matter indices revealed significant differences between controls and spelling-impaired children, mainly located in the right hemisphere (superior corona radiata (SCR), posterior limb of internal capsule, superior longitudinal fasciculus). After 5 weeks of training, spelling ability improved in the training group, along with increases in fractional anisotropy and decreases of radial diffusivity in the right hemisphere compared to controls. In addition, significantly higher decreases of mean diffusivity in the right SCR for the spelling-impaired training group compared to the waiting group were observed. Our results suggest that spelling impairment is associated with differences in white-matter integrity in the right hemisphere. We also provide first indications that white matter changes occur during successful training, but this needs to be more specifically addressed in future research.

No abstract

Previous fMRI studies in English-speaking samples suggested that specific interventions may alter brain function in language-relevant networks in children with reading and spelling difficulties, but this research strongly focused on reading impaired individuals. Only few studies so far investigated characteristics of brain activation associated with poor spelling ability and whether a specific spelling intervention may also be associated with distinct changes in brain activity patterns. We here investigated such effects of a morpheme-based spelling intervention on brain function in 20 children with comparatively poor spelling and reading abilities using repeated fMRI. Relative to 10 matched controls, children with comparatively poor spelling and reading abilities showed increased activation in frontal medial and right hemispheric regions and decreased activation in left occipito-temporal regions prior to the intervention, during processing of a lexical decision task. After five weeks of intervention, spelling and reading comprehension significantly improved in the training group, along with increased activation in the left temporal, parahippocampal and hippocampal regions. Conversely, the waiting group showed increases in right posterior regions. Our findings could indicate an increased left temporal activation associated with the recollection of the new learnt morpheme-based strategy related to successful training.

Behavioral and neurophysiological effects of a computer-aided morphological training protocol were examined in German-speaking children from Grades 3 to 9. Study 1 compared morphological awareness, reading, and spelling skills of 34 trained children with an untrained control group of 34 children matched for age, sex, and intelligence. All participants in the training group showed increases in morphological awareness, but only students from secondary school improved significantly in reading and spelling competences. In Study 2, a subsample of 8 trained children with poor spelling and reading abilities and 10 untrained children with higher language competencies underwent an electroencephalography testing involving three different language tasks. The training resulted in decreased thetaactivity and increased activity in lower (7-10 Hz) and upper alpha (10-13 Hz). These findings reflect more effortful and attention-demanding processing after the training and suggest that children with poor spelling and reading abilities use the acquired morphological knowledge in terms of a compensatory strategy.

Zusammenfassung. Obwohl internationale Studien belegen, dass morphematisches Wissen eine Basiskompetenz im Schriftspracherwerb darstellt, liegen für den deutschsprachigen Raum kaum Befunde dazu vor. Da unter dem Terminus „morphematische Bewusstheit“ oft sehr unterschiedliche Kompetenzen subsumiert werden, herrscht hier noch große Unklarheit. In der Arbeit wird klar zwischen einer morphematischen Rechtschreibstrategie und der morphematischen Bewusstheit unterschieden. An der Querschnittstudie nahmen 1125 Kinder aus Österreich und Deutschland im Alter von 9 bis 13 Jahren (Schulstufe 4 bis 7) teil. Ein eigens entwickelter Satzergänzungstest erhebt die Leistungen in der morphematischen Bewusstheit durch Abwandlung von Pseudowörtern. Dies schließt einen Rückgriff auf lexikalisches Wissen aus. Anschließend wurde mit Hilfe einer zweifaktoriellen Kovarianzanalyse der Einfluss der morphematischen Bewusstheit auf die Rechtschreibleistung untersucht. Ein Vergleich der Leistungen in der morphematischen Bewusstheit zeigte, dass sich diese von der 4. bis zur 6. Schulstufe signifikant erhöhen, lediglich zwischen der 6. und 7. Schulstufe gab es keine bedeutsamen Unterschiede. Ebenso zeigen sich hohe Zusammenhänge der morphematischen Bewusstheit mit allgemeinen Rechtschreibkennwerten wie der Summe der richtig verschriftlichten Grapheme (r = .61) und der richtig verschriftlichten Wörter (r = .65) sowie mit der morphematischen Rechtschreibstrategie (r = .61) und der orthografischen Rechtschreibstrategie (r=.58).

German orthography has highly consistent grapheme–phoneme correspondences, whereas the consistency of phoneme–grapheme correspondences is much lower, but morphological consistency is very high. After giving a short description of German language and orthography, the current article reviews earlier findings on early spelling acquisition, showing that even poor spellers are well able to produce phonologically adequate spellings early on. In contrast, the acquisition of orthographic markers, which are mostly morphology-based, is a long-term enterprise. We present data for the close association of morphological awareness (assessed by a classroom measure requiring students to build new word forms based on presented pseudowords) with orthographic spelling skills. In a large sample (N = 796) of students in Grades 4–7, morphological awareness predicted children's spelling skills above and beyond fluid intelligence and phonological spelling skills. In the last section of this article, we review findings on the efficiency of morphology-based spelling intervention in German.

This study explores oscillatory brain activity by means of event-related synchronization and desynchronization (%ERS/ERD) of EEG activity during the use of phonological and orthographic-morphological spelling strategies in L2 (English) and L1 (German) in native German speaking children. EEG was recorded while 33 children worked on a task requiring either phonological or orthographic-morphological spelling strategies. L2 processing elicited more theta %ERS than L1 processing (particularly at bilateral frontal and right posterior parietal sites) which might suggest a stronger involvement of semantic encoding and retrieval of the less familiar L2. The highest level of theta %ERS was revealed for the orthographic-morphological strategy in L2 which might indicate a more intense way of lexical retrieval compared to the phonological strategy in L2 and the orthographic-morphological strategy in L1. Analyses moreover revealed that phonological processing (both in L1 and L2) was associated with comparatively strong left-hemispheric %ERD in the upper alpha frequency band.

Morpheme-based literacy training programs are widely used in German primary schools. This study investigated whether (1) morphological training is effective early in development (Grade 2) and (2) literacy gains can be attributed to advanced morphological processing. Fiftytwo German-speaking second-graders participated in an eight-week morpheme-based training program, while an age-matched control group (n = 41) attended regular language classes. All children completed spelling, reading and morphological awareness tasks and participated in a masked primed lexical decision experiment, once before training, and then again following training. We observed training effects for spelling and reading morphologically complex words, with bigger increases in the intervention than the control group. In addition, the masked priming results revealed that lexical decision times decreased more strongly in the intervention than the control group, but there was no clear training impact on the pattern of morphological priming. However, the performance on standardized reading tests and a morphological awareness task did not differ across participant groups. Thus, while written language processing improved, it is unclear whether these effects can be attributed to morphological processing or rather general gains in orthographic knowledge.