Reading and spelling profiles of adult poor readers: Phonological, orthographic and morphological considerations

Abstract

Reading and spelling skills are important to communicate in today's literate society, however, the underlying processes of spelling skills are under‐researched compared to reading skills. Our goals were to (a) study how the component skills of phonological, orthographic and morphological awareness are different in adults with and without reading difficulties, and (b) characterize the relationship between the component skills and reading and spelling performance in both skilled and poor readers. Participants (N = 37, N = 15 with reading impairments and N = 22 skilled readers) took part in the study where they completed several literacy‐based measures. We performed a series of mixed ANOVAs to study the between‐group differences in performance and the relationship between different literacy outcomes, respectively. We found evidence for poor phonological and morphological awareness in the poor readers compared to the skilled readers. We also found differential relationships between the component skills and reading and spelling behavior. Specifically, sound awareness was significantly related to reading and spelling measures in the skilled readers, whereas morphological and sound awareness played an important role in the same skills in the poor readers. We discuss these findings in the context of potential remediation strategies for adults with persistent literacy impairments.

Moving towards an Understanding of the Role of the Inferior Fronto-Occipital Fasciculus in Language Processing

“…The behavioral tasks consisted of 'awareness' tasks (phonological [29], orthographic [30,31], morphological [32]) and 'letter probe' tasks (phonological, orthographic-phonological, orthographic [33,34]). Participants also completed two standardized measures of reading performance, namely the test of word reading [35].…”

Development of Word-Specific Orthographic Awareness Test: A Study of Validity and Reliability

“…The word similarity task is widely used to evaluate general (sublexical) orthographic awareness skills (Georgiou et al, 2021;Rothe et al, 2015;Siegel et al, 1995;Vellutino et al, 1994;. In some studies, it is seen that orthographic awareness is used in both measurement tasks mentioned above (Berninger et al, 2010;Cheema et al, 2023;Conrad et al, 2013;Golden, 1997;Powell et al, 2014).…”

Equivalence of Computer- and Paper-Based Administrations of the SCHNAPP Spelling Test in German for Six-Year-Old Children

“…Spelling is often considered an important building block of general literacy later in life. This influence becomes apparent, for example, through the development of orthographic awareness resulting in knowledge of typical orthographic patterns of an alphabetic writing system such as English or German (Cheema et al, 2023; Domahs et al, 2016). The importance of spelling abilities is also emphasized by developmental studies that highlight connections between deficits in spelling and reading difficulties in different writing systems (Cheema et al, 2023; De Sousa Lopes & Bedulho, 2022; Pan et al., 2021) or between spelling competence and handwriting speed which is considered an important determinant of literacy development (e.g., for Spanish orthography see Afonso et al, 2020).…”