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Development of spelling skills in a shallow orthography: the case of Italian language

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Abstract

This study analyzed the spelling skills of Italian children as a function of school experience. We examined the writing performances of 465 first- to eighth-grade normal readers on a spelling test that included regular words, context-sensitive regular words, words with ambiguous transcription, and regular pseudowords. Based on the dual-route model (DRM), the regularity and orthographic complexity effects were considered to probe sublexical processing while the lexicality effect was taken to mark lexical processing. The analysis of spelling performances indicated that, among Italian children, both lexical and sublexical procedures are available since the first year of schooling. However, the two procedures showed different developmental trends. The DRM appears as a useful theoretical framework to describe the development of spelling in a relatively regular language such as Italian.

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Notes

  1. Here and following squared brackets indicate a phonological transcription, capital letters indicate the spelling of a stimulus and the asterisk marks non-lexical spelling errors.

  2. In the original paper, the authors referred to a graphemic layer and not to a graphemic buffer, although the graphemic layer served the buffering function of the graphemic buffer.

  3. Analog pseudowords were created modifying the initial consonant letter of high frequency words. Thus, they had the same rhyme from which they were derived. For non-analog pseudowords, other letters were also modified in such a way to make it impossible to identify the word from which they were derived.

  4. Italian words with ambiguous transcription are both words with common and uncommon sound-to-spelling map**. For instance, among the words with the phonetic group [kw], more frequent are the words in which the transcription is CUO (58%), less frequent those with the transcription QUO (37%), and rare those in which the phonetic group [kw] is realized by the string CQU (only 5%) (De Mauro, 2000). The same applies for words containing the syllables [t∫e], [∫e], [dʒe]: the transcriptions SCE, CE and GE are more frequent than SCIE, CIE and GIE.

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Acknowledgments

The analysis of the interaction between lexical and sublexical processes was carried out during a period of stay of A.N. in the laboratory of Dr. Johannes C. Ziegler. We thank Dr. Ziegler for his helpful advices on this matter.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, University of Bari, Palazzo Ateneo, P.zza Umberto I 1, 70121, Bari, Italy

    Alessandra Notarnicola & Paola Angelelli

  2. Neuropsychological Unit, IRCCS Fondation Santa Lucia, via Ardeatina 306, 00179, Rome, Italy

    Anna Judica & Pierluigi Zoccolotti

  3. Department of Psychology, University of Roma “La Sapienza”, via dei Marsi 78, 00176, Rome, Italy

    Pierluigi Zoccolotti

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  1. Alessandra Notarnicola
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  2. Paola Angelelli
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  3. Anna Judica
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  4. Pierluigi Zoccolotti
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Correspondence to Paola Angelelli.

Appendix

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Table 5 De-randomized list of words with ambiguous transcription
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Notarnicola, A., Angelelli, P., Judica, A. et al. Development of spelling skills in a shallow orthography: the case of Italian language. Read Writ 25, 1171–1194 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11145-011-9312-0

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