Activating the meaning of a word facilitates the integration of orthography: evidence from spelling exercises in beginning spellers

Abstract

The present study examines the effect of activating the connection between meaning and phonology in spelling exercises in second-grade spellers (n 5 41; 8 years and 3 months). In computer-based exercises in a within-subject design, semantic and neutral descriptions were contrasted and provided either before the process of spelling or in feedback. Orthographic and phonological information was available in all practice conditions. The results indicate that words trained with semantic descriptions are better spelled than words trained with neutral descriptions, even when tested 1 month after a training period. No differential effects appear between descriptions that were presented before spelling or presented in feedback. The current study can be taken to suggest that activation of the semantic constituent is facilitative in acquiring a stable association between the phonological and the orthographic properties.Learning to spell a word in an alphabetic language involves acquiring knowledge about the phonological properties and how to relate these to an orthographic representation. Although alphabetic languages differ in the degree to which they depart from a consistent representation of phonemes in order to preserve linguistic or lexical information, the relationships between phonological and orthographic information should be a crucial focus in spelling training programmes (e.g. Bishop, Adams, Lehtonen & Rosen, 2005;Castle, Riach & Nicholson, 1993;Foorman, Francis, Novy & Liberman, 1991;Schneider, Roth & Ennemoser, 2000). On the assumption that there are three major constituents of word identity -phonology, meaning and orthography, the present study examines the extent to which activating the semantic-phonology connection facilitates the acquisition of word-specific orthographic information.The influence of the three lexical properties on the acquisition of orthographic knowledge has recently received considerable attention in studies using an orthographic learning paradigm (CunninghamThis paradigm suggests that orthographic knowledge increases along with multiple encounters with a specific word. Repeated exposure to a given word strengthens the

On forward inferences of fast and slow readers. An eye movement study

“…A recent intervention study provided evidence for this suggestion. The study reported that (pre-)activating the semantics of to-be-learned words helped beginning readers with the acquisition of stable associations between the phonological and the orthographic properties of words 59 . Whether the comparative lack of generating forward inferences in slow compared to fast readers is a symptom of a reading disorder or whether it plays a more direct and causal role in accounting for the speed impairment of slow readers is subject to future studies.…”

Enhancing Decoding Efficiency in Poor Readers via a Word Identification Game

“…In addition to the facilitation of word decoding, Henderson, Weighall, and Gaskell () found that lexical consolidation (i.e., the recall of newly learned words 24 hours after training) improved when British children 5–9 years of age were exposed to the meanings of the target words as compared with children who were not. Alongside the evidence that semantics has an influence on word decoding and lexical consolidation, it was evidenced that Dutch second graders were better able to spell newly learned words when they were presented in conjunction with a semantics description during training (Hilte & Reitsma, ). This enhanced spelling is also an indication that orthographic and phonological knowledge can be enhanced by the incorporation of semantic information.…”

The Efficiency of Briefly Presenting Word Forms in a Computerized Repeated Spelling Training

“…Third, we checked the familiarity of the children with the stimuli by asking teachers to rate the children's knowledge of the meaning of each word. In future studies, children's knowledge of the meaning of items should be used as control measure, because not having been familiar with the meaning of a word may have influenced the spelling performance (Hilte & Reitsma, 2011a). Finally, future investigations should also consider follow-up tests to provide information on retention of the knowledge.…”