Do reading and spelling share orthographic representations? Evidence from developmental dysgraphia

Abstract

Both spelling and reading depend on knowledge of the spellings of words. Despite this commonality, observed dissociations between spelling and reading in cases of acquired and developmental deficits suggest some degree of independence between the cognitive mechanisms involved in these skills. In this paper, we examine the relationship between spelling and reading in two children with developmental dysgraphia. For both children, we identified significant deficits in spelling that affected the processing of orthographic long-term memory representations of words. We then examined their reading skills for similar difficulties. Even with extensive testing, we found no evidence of a reading deficit for one of the children. We propose that there may be an underlying difficulty that specifically affects the learning of orthographic word representations for spelling. These results lead us to conclude that at least some components of lexical orthographic representation and processing develop with considerable independence in spelling and reading.

Keywords: Developmental cognitive neuropsychology; developmental dysgraphia; orthographic knowledge; spelling.

Figures

Figure 1.

Depictions of the cognitive architectures for (A) reading and (B) spelling in adults.

Figure 1.

Depictions of the cognitive architectures for (A) reading and (B) spelling in adults.

Figure 2.

A. PJT writing sample. B. Literal transcription. C. Text PJT intended to write.

Figure 3.

A. AKR writing sample. B. Literal transcription (ignoring crossed-out letters and occasional use of upper-case in place of lower-case letter forms). C. Text AKR intended to write.

Figure 4.

Accuracy by normalized position in PJT’s spelling data.

Figure 5.

A model of a cognitive architecture for written language processing with modality-independent lexical orthographic representations. Sublexical processes are omitted. Solid lines are used for processes and representations involved in spelling and dashed lines for those involved in reading. Bold indicates processes and representations involved specifically in lexical orthographic processing in reading and spelling.

Figure 6.

A model of a cognitive architecture for written language processing from a nodes-and-links perspective. Labels on nodes are only for clarification, and do not indicate content “inside” a node.