Spelling development in young children: A case of representational redescription?

Abstract

Two experiments explored children's spelling development in the context of the Representational-Redescription Model (Karmiloff-Smith, 1992). Fifty-one 5-7 year old children (experiment one) and 44 5-6 year olds (experiment two) were assessed, via spelling production and recognition tasks, for phonological to morphological spelling development and representational levels derived from the RR model respectively.Children were allocated to one of the Nunes, Bindman and Bryant's (1997) stages for spelling production and to one of the representational levels derived from the RR model for spelling recognition and accompanying verbal justifications indicating their knowledge and understanding of spelling. These results are discussed in terms of how the R-R model accounts for the, hitherto unexplained cognitive mechanisms that underlie spelling development and the notion of multi-representation in spelling.Key phrases: Spelling development, RR model Spelling development in young children: A case of Representational-Redescription?This study focuses on spelling development in young children and whether this can be understood in the context of Karmiloff-Smith's (1992) RepresentationalRedescription (RR) model (see Steffler, 2001). The RR model describes how knowledge is represented in the cognitive system and how this knowledge changes with development. This is the first study to investigate the validity of the model for understanding spelling development. We will briefly discuss current views from the spelling literature about how spelling develops in young children. Early stage models (e.g. Frith, 1985) proposed that children gradually become more sophisticated in their spelling passing from an early "alphabetic stage" based on phonology and letter-sound correspondences to a later more sophisticated "orthographic stage" where higher order knowledge about spelling is acquired.Drawing upon this evidence and other more recent studies, Steffler (2001) concluded that a consensus has been reached within the literature, that spelling progresses from a visually based, phonological level, to a higher-order morphological level and then to a level where both of these aspects are taken into account, resulting in the correct production of spelling.Nunes, Bindman and Bryant (1997) provided support for this progression with a longitudinal study over three years using groups of children, aged 6, 7 and 8. At each of three sessions, participants did a spelling test of 30 words consisting of 10 regular past tense verbs, e.g. called; 10 irregular past tense verbs, e.g. slept; and 10 nonverbs, e.g., bird. Their results suggested that children progress through five developmental stages when learning the spelling of word endings. At stage one the spelling of word endings Spelling development: Representational-Redescription? 4 was found to be unsystematic and with little resemblance to either the end sound or to the conventional -ed. In some cases the last sound was not spelt at all. At stage two endings were frequently phonetic (i.e. sp...

Da escrita grafo-perceptiva à escrita fonetizada: Factores e processos evolutivos na descoberta do princípio alfabético

“…Perante o conflito cognitivo, algumas crianças recorreram a uma representação explícita de um nível conceptual anterior para justificar a sua escrita ou recorreram mesmo a uma representação implícita (Critten et al, 2007;KarmiloffSmith, 1992). No primeiro caso, por exemplo, crianças silábicas ou silábicas com fonetização, que escreveram uma terceira letra nas palavras dissilábicas, justificando que duas letras "não chega", ou seja, não tendo ainda acesso explícito ao conhecimento de que a cada sílaba corresponde uma letra, as crianças verbalizaram uma representação anterior -critério de quantidade mínima de grafemas (Ferreiro & Teberosky, 1979/2005) -para justificar a sua escrita.…”

“…No segundo caso, por exemplo, crianças silábicas com fonetização que não foram capazes de justificar a sua escrita, apesar de terem sido capazes de mobilizar a letra correcta, ou crianças pré-silábicas que reconheceram oralmente a letra, sem depois a mobilizarem na escrita. Neste último caso, apesar de as crianças reconhecerem as letras oralmente, o seu conhecimento de que as letras correspondem aos sons da fala é ainda implícito, ou seja, não estando nem consciente nem cognitivamente acessível (Karmiloff-Smith, 1986, 1992, o conhecimento não é utilizado pelas crianças, pois tal como salientam Critten et al (2007), a capacidade de reconhecimento supera a escrita.…”

Agreeing to Disagree: Deaf and Hearing Children's Awareness of Subject–Verb Number Agreement

“…However, during language development one often finds that implicit knowledge precedes explicit knowledge (Critten, Pine, & Steffler, 2007). Therefore, the younger RA matched hearing children might find the explicit use of agreement required for error corrections much harder, despite showing implicit awareness (see Table 1).…”

Spelling: Processes and strategies in print and computer formats.

“…Analysis of misspelling in children shows that the types of errors that children make reflects their understanding of spelling knowledge (Steffler, Varnhagen, Friesen & Treiman, 1998). As an understanding of nouns and verbs deepens over time, their spelling skills transition from being phonological to morphologically-based (Critten, Pine, & Steffler, 2007). Overall, spelling researchers conclude that a child's understanding of spelling relies on multiple cognitive representations of words in his or her mental lexicon; and that words can be represented at different levels of explicitation within the cognitive system (i.e., multilevel representations for different types of words; Critten et al, 2007;Steffler, 2001).…”

“…Recent spelling models are extending their reach by addressing the unsystematic progression of spelling skills and the developmental patterns of misspellings. For instance, a study on spelling development by Critten, Pine, and Steffler (2007) examines the progression from phonologically based spelling to the regular use of orthographic rules until the morphological understanding of words is attained. These authors conclude that skilled spelling relies on multiple and multileveled cognitive representations of words stored in one's mental lexicon.…”