Development of spelling skills in a shallow orthography: the case … · children at different stages of acquisition of a shallow orthography (Italian). The dual-route model assumes

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Development of spelling skills in a shallow orthography: The case of Italian

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Article in Reading and Writing · May 2012

DOI: 10.1007/s11145-011-9312-0

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

Alessandra Notarnicola · Paola Angelelli ·Anna Judica · Pierluigi Zoccolotti

© Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011

Abstract This study analyzed the spelling skills of Italian children as a function ofschool 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 devel-

opment of spelling in a relatively regular language such as Italian.

Keywords Spelling acquisition · Orthography · Dual-route models ·Lexicality effect · Regularity effect · Graphemic complexity effect ·

Development · Italian

Introduction

The general aim of this study was to examine the spelling skills of Italian children as

a function of school experience. We were also interested in assessing if the

A. Notarnicola · P. Angelelli (&)Department of Psychology, University of Bari, Palazzo Ateneo, P.zza Umberto I 1, 70121 Bari, Italy

e-mail: [email protected]

A. Judica · P. Zoccolotti

Neuropsychological Unit, IRCCS Foundation Santa Lucia, via Ardeatina 306, 00179 Rome, Italy

P. Zoccolotti

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

123

Read Writ

DOI 10.1007/s11145-011-9312-0

dual-route model, originally formulated to describe the spelling performances of

adult individuals (e.g., Kreiner, 1992; Patterson, 1986; Perry, Ziegler, & Coltheart,

2002; see also Tainturier & Rapp, 2001, for a overview of this theoretical

framework and relevant evidence) effectively accounts for the spelling skills of

children at different stages of acquisition of a shallow orthography (Italian).

The dual-route model assumes the existence of at least two processes for

spelling: A lexical process, which relies on accessing word-specific memory (e.g.,

Barry, 1994) and may be semantically mediated (Hillis & Caramazza, 1991) or may

involve direct connections between phonology and orthography (e.g., Patterson,

1986), and a sublexical process, based on phonological-to-orthographic conversion

rules (Patterson, 1986; Tainturier & Rapp, 2000).

According to DRM, spelling a verbally presented familiar word entails the

activation of the lexical process: The phonological lexeme of the word, stored in the

phonological lexicon, is retrieved; activation of the phonological representation

leads to access to its semantic representation within the semantic system, and then to

its orthographic representation in the orthographic lexicon. Some authors propose a

second lexical process that directly associates phonological to orthographic

representations, bypassing semantics (Patterson, 1986; Roeltgen, Rothi, & Heilman,

1986; Romani, Olson, Ward, & Ercolani, 2002). On the other hand, the sublexical

process assembles the spelling of unfamiliar words or pseudowords (i.e., non-lexical

units) making use of knowledge regarding the systematic correspondences between

phonemes and graphemes. According to the theory, the sublexical process is based

on two conversion processes: Acoustic-to-phonological and phoneme-to-grapheme.

First, the individual segments and identifies the phonological string to be converted;

then, graphemes corresponding to a plausible spelling are activated by means of a

phoneme-to-grapheme conversion process that exploits sound-to-spelling corre-

spondences (Patterson, 1986). Finally, the graphemic string (retrieved from the

orthographic lexicon or assembled via phoneme-to-grapheme conversion process-

ing) must be held in short-memory by the graphemic buffer. This maintains the

activation level of the abstract letter sequences during the time it takes to convert it

to specific letter shapes (i.e., the appropriate allographic representations, such as

lower-case or upper-case script), leading ultimately to the production of the

appropriate writing movements.

According to DRM, irregular words (i.e., words which violate the most frequent

phoneme-grapheme correspondences) must be spelt by the lexical process; words

with regular sound-to-spelling correspondences can be processed by either

procedure; and pseudowords can be spelt only by the sublexical procedure (e.g.,

Barry & De Bastiani, 1997). Therefore, performance on irregular words and

pseudowords indicates the efficiency of the lexical and sublexical processes,

respectively.

By contrast, many connectionist models of spelling (e.g., Brown & Loosemore,

1994; Bullinaria, 1994; Olson & Caramazza, 1994) assume that irregular words and

pseudowords are spelt by a single procedure operating over distributed represen-

tations of orthographic and phonological units. Parallel distributed processing (PDP)

theories of spelling assume distributed representations rather than localist phono-

logical and orthographic lexemes, and distinguish the two processing pathways as

A. Notarnicola et al.

123

semantically and phonologically mediated processes (rather than lexical and

sublexical).

Various development models have been advanced to account for the acquisition

of written word knowledge. In a connectionist perspective (Ehri, 1998; Perfetti,

1992; Share, 1995), a single process (the phonological procedure) is supposed to

provide the basic mechanism for acquiring the knowledge of written words (whether

regular or irregular). Other development models are based on a dual-route

perspective and propose that the two processes are acquired by a progression of

stages, with beginners firstly relying on the sublexical processes and only

subsequently shifting to the lexical one (Frith, 1985; Marsh, Morton, Welch, &

Desberg, 1980; Seymour & McGregor, 1984). Accordingly, reliance on the

sublexical route should be more evident at early stages of spelling acquisition with

children prevalently using frequent phoneme-to-grapheme correspondences, even

though not always lexically correct; evidence of lexical involvement should be

prominent at later stages of acquisition. However, the central assumption of these

models that literacy acquisition progresses through fixed qualitatively distinct stages

has been severely criticized (e.g., Stuart & Coltheart, 1988). Several studies

indicated that, at the beginning of literacy acquisition, there are individual

differences in children’s spelling styles influenced by different factors, such as

teaching methods, preschooler abilities, and orthographic regularity (e.g., Castles,

Holmes, & Wong, 1997; Stuart & Coltheart, 1988; Treiman, 1984). For instance,

Castles et al. (1997) gave three lists of items to spell (regular words, irregular words,

and pseudowords) to 128 third graders. Variations in spelling styles indicated an

early involvement of both lexical and sublexical procedures in spelling.

Furthermore, recent cross-linguistic studies indicate that the ontogenetic

acquisition of the different procedures is not the same across languages and point

to the importance of orthographic consistency on spelling acquisition (for reviews

see Caravolas, 2004; Sprenger-Charolles, Colé, & Serniclaes, 2006). Note that

orthographic regularity of a language can be different between reading and spelling.

For instance, English is irregular in the grapheme-to-phoneme as well as in the

phoneme-to-grapheme direction. However, other languages are relatively regular in

one direction but not in the other. This is the case of French, German, Portuguese,

and Italian, in which writing is often unpredictable but reading aloud is highly

predictable (Ziegler & Goswami, 2005). Finally, other languages (like Czech,

Finnish, and Turkish) are highly consistent in both directions (Caravolas, 2004).

Orthographic consistency may influence how learners of different writing systems

acquire spelling skills calling into question the universality of spelling development.

In particular, it is possible that the acquisition of the sublexical and lexical

procedures depend upon the degree of orthographic consistency of the different

languages.

With respect to the acquisition of the sublexical procedure, cross-linguistic

studies indicate that the less regular the writing system, the less children rely on

sublexical processing. This pattern has been reported comparing English children to

Spanish, German or French children (for reviews, see Caravolas, 2004; Sprenger-

Charolles, 2003). Moreover, the sublexical procedure is acquired more rapidly in

regular than in irregular orthographies. For instance, Czech first grade children

The case of Italian language

123

showed higher accuracy on a pseudoword spelling test than age-matched English

children (Caravolas & Bruck, 1993). Similar data have been reported in cross-

linguistic studies in which first grade children learning intermediate orthographies,

such as German (Wimmer & Landerl, 1997), showed better pseudoword spelling

skills than age-matched English children.

With respect to the acquisition of the lexical procedure, data on shallow

orthographies are controversial. In its original formulation, the depth orthographic

hypothesis (Frost, Katz, & Bentin, 1987) maintained that, in highly regular

languages, the prevalence of words with regular transcription would make the

development of the lexical strategy unnecessary (e.g., Ardila, 1991; Ardila, Rosselli,

& Pinzòn, 1989). By contrast, other studies reported cases of double dissociation in

which only one of the two spelling procedures was impaired (e.g., Iribarren, Jarema,

& Lecours, 2001; Luzzatti, Laiacona, Allamano, De Tanti, & Inzaghi, 1998),

supporting the availability of the lexical route also in shallow orthographies.

Nevertheless, these studies did not provide direct evidence for an early use/reliance

of the lexical procedure in young spellers.

With regard to the relationship between the two processes, evidence comes from

studies of acquired dysgraphic patients (e.g., Folk & Jones, 2004; Folk, Rapp, &

Goldrick, 2002; Hillis & Caramazza, 1991; Laiacona et al., 2004; Rapp, Epstein, &

Tainturier, 2002) as well as proficient spellers (e.g., Barry & De Bastiani, 1997).

They show lexical influences on pseudoword spelling using different paradigms

such as lexical priming or neighborhood effects (e.g., Barry, 1988; Campbell, 1983;

Cuetos, 1993; Folk & Rapp, 2004).

For instance, Rapp et al. (2002) described a brain-injured patient (LAT) who

made phonologically plausible errors in writing words (e.g., “bouquet” spelt as

BOUKET) containing low-frequency (yet lexically correct) spellings (i.e., /ei/ spelt

as ET). Because these errors were phonologically plausible they did not appear to be

generated by the lexical process; yet, because they contained low probability,

lexically correct elements, they did not call on the activity of the sublexical process

either. Rapp et al. (2002) proposed that many of LAT’s phonologically plausible

errors consisted of the integrated output of elements generated by lexical and

sublexical processes. Folk et al. (2002, 2004) investigated the interaction between

lexical and sublexical processes in spelling in two dysgraphic patients. Lexical

substitutions increased under articulatory suppression, indicating that when the

sublexical process was disrupted, form-related word neighbors were more likely to

successfully compete for output with the target word. In Italian, a peculiar type of

spelling impairment, characterized by better performance on regular than irregular

(ambiguous) words or pseudowords, has been reported in some aphasic patients

(Laiacona et al., 2004, 2009; Luzzatti et al., 1998). The origin of this pattern of

errors (referred to as “mixed dysgraphia”) might lie in the mutual interaction

between the residual resources of the sublexical and lexical procedures; accord-

ingly, regular words are spelt more efficiently since they can be processed along

both routes. In other words, mutual interaction would occur in the presence of

impairment to both lexical and sublexical processing.

Converging results are reported in studies on normal subjects (Barry, 1988; Barry

& De Bastiani, 1997; Folk & Rapp, 2004). Using a modified lexical decision task,


123

Barry and De Bastiani (1997) tested the presence of a lexical priming effect on

pseudoword in Italian spelling. Undergraduate students heard lists of words and

pseudowords but had to write down only the pseudowords. Pseudowords with two

orthographically inconsistent phonological segments were used: The segment [t∫e],which may be spelled in Italian as either CE or CIE (as in RADICE (=root) andSPECIE (=species)), and the initial segment [kw], which may be spelled as eitherCU or QU (as in CUOCO (=chef) and QUOTA (=quote)).1 Barry and De Bastiani(1997) reported lexical priming effects on pseudoword spelling in Italian:

Participants were prone to spell pseudowords with the orthographic segment

constituting the prime word they had just heard. The authors proposed that, despite

its regular orthography, Italian is not spelled only sublexically and that lexical and

sublexical processes operate interactively.

All these studies provide support for the notion that lexical and sublexical

processes share information during the spelling of a familiar word. According to

Rapp et al. (2002) both the lexical and sublexical processes are simultaneously

engaged by a phonological stimulus and activate candidate graphemic elements at

the level of the graphemic buffer,2 where information is integrated. In turn, these

graphemes activate lexemes that contain them via feedback links between the

grapheme and lexeme nodes of the orthographic output lexicon. In this way,

sublexical information strengthens the graphemes of a target word creating an

advantage for the target over lexical competitors.

As for the ontogenetic development of spelling, much less is known about the

relationship between sublexical and lexical processing. Notably, only a few studies

took into account the psycholinguistic characteristics of the stimuli such as

frequency, regularity, age of acquisition, etc.

With regard to French, Sprenger-Charolles, Siegel, Béchennec and Serniclaes

(2003) studied the development of sublexical and lexical processing from the

middle of first grade to the end of fourth grade examining the effects of regularity

and lexicality on spelling. Performances on pseudoword and irregular word spelling

were used as estimates of sublexical and lexical skills, respectively. Sublexical

spelling was acquired quite early: Children relied on phonologic-to-orthographic

conversion rules even when indicators of lexical processing appeared. In particular,

children spelt regular items (words and pseudowords) more accurately than irregular

items across all grades tested and presented a ceiling effect for pseudowords (i.e.,

92% of accuracy) by third grade. Moreover, regular words were never spelt more

accurately than pseudowords indicating that the lexicality effect never favored word

spelling. The authors concluded that, in French, sublexical processing is more

prominent than orthographic processing at all grades and that the early reliance on

the sublexical procedure has an important role on the acquisition of word-specific

orthographic representations.

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.


123

Similar results were reported for Portuguese, a language more regular than

French, in a study on the early acquisition of spelling in first grade children in the

middle (February) and end (June) of the school year (Fernandes, Ventura, Querido,

& Morais, 2008). The regularity effect (regular words vs. irregular words

processing), the grapheme complexity effect (simple vs. complex grapheme

processing), the presence of regularization errors (resulting from the complete

parsing of letter-to-sound correspondences), and the presence of errors minus one

(resulting from the correct parsing of phoneme-to-grapheme correspondences,

except for one grapheme-to-phoneme) were used to probe sublexical processing.

Lexical processing was inferred from the presence of the frequency effect (high vs.

low frequency word processing), the lexicality effect (words vs. pseudowords

processing), and the analogy effect (analog vs. non-analog pseudoword3 process-

ing). In February, there were both regularity and grapheme complexity effects

indicating that children relied on sublexical processing. The lexicality effect found

in June indicated that, by the end of first grade, children had begun to rely on lexical

processing. The authors concluded that the spelling of Portuguese children initially

involved sublexical processing but was increasingly influenced by lexical process-

ing as literacy acquisition progressed. As in French, also in Portuguese the intensive

reliance on sublexical mediation probably created the conditions for the consol-

idation of the orthographic representation of words. In both French and Portuguese,

signs of reliance on phonologic-to-orthographic conversion rules appeared before

signs referring to lexical processing but did not decline with the emergence of

lexical processing. In fact, reliance on sublexical processing was evident at all

grades tested.

With regard to Italian, spelling received much less attention than reading. Studies

on reading acquisition generally indicated the availability of lexical processing early

also in the Italian language. Some of these studies examined the effect of the lexical

status of stimuli, comparing reading performance on words and pseudowords

(Brizzolara, Chiosi, Cipriani, & De Pasquale, 1993; Cossu, Gugliotta, & Marshall,

1995; Martini, Brizzolata, Pecini, Dinetti, & Negrin, 2002; Maschietto & Vio, 1998;

Orsolini, Fanari, Tosi, De Nigris, & Carrieri, 2006). Other studies considered the

effects of variables such as word frequency on the reading of words (e.g.,

Zoccolotti, De Luca, Di Filippo, Judica, & Martelli, 2009) and pseudowords (e.g.,

Marcolini, Burani, & Colombo, 2008) or the morphological structure of words

(e.g., Marcolini & Burani, 2003).

With regard to development of spelling, only two studies are available (Cossu

et al., 1995; Tressoldi, 1996). Tressoldi (1996) analyzed the development of spelling

skills from grade 2 to grade 8 by means of a spelling task including regular words

(controlled for orthographic complexity and word frequency), regular pseudowords

(controlled for orthographic complexity), and sentences containing pseudo-homo-

phone contrasts (l’ago = needle vs. lago = lake): A task aiming to assess lexical

spelling skills. In fact, reliance on lexical knowledge is needed to disambiguate

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.


123

between the two homophonic, not homographic, alternatives. However, note that

successful performance also involves other abilities, such as conceptual and

syntactic skills. Errors were much more frequent in the pseudo-homophone task

than in pseudoword spelling across all grades. Tressoldi (1996) concluded that

Italian children rely more on sublexical than lexical processing. This in turn delays

the development of the lexical procedure. Cossu et al. (1995) studied the spelling of

words and pseudowords in Italian first and second graders reaching different

conclusions. There was a significant superiority in performance on words versus

pseudowords already by first grade, indicating that Italian children are engaged in

the construction of word-specific orthographic representations from the start of

literacy acquisition. Overall, information from these studies does not allow a

straightforward conclusion on the acquisition of the sublexical and lexical spelling

procedures in Italian.

Due to the widespread opinion that Italian is a highly regular language,

assessment of lexical spelling is generally considered quite difficult. However, as

stated above, like other alphabetic orthographies, Italian is more consistent in the

spelling-to-sound than in the sound-to-spelling direction. Examples of unpredictable

spelling are those cases in which a given phonological string has more than one

possible orthographic solution, though only one is correct. Some ambiguities

concern words with the phonetic group [kw], that may be transcribed by the

orthographic sequences CU, QU, or CQU before O (e.g., [kwo] respectively in the

words CUORE (=heart), LIQUORE (=liqueur) and ACQUOLINA (=watering)).

Other ambiguities in spelling are more related to the pronunciation of specific

linguistic areas, as in the case of the syllables [t∫e], [∫e], [dʒe], which may, or maynot, require the i (e.g., [∫ena] is conveyed SCENA (=scene) and not *SCIENA, but[∫entsa] is conveyed SCIENZA (=science) and not *SCENZA4; for a detaileddescription of unpredictable spelling in Italian see Angelelli, Judica, Spinelli,

Zoccolotti, & Luzzatti, 2004; Luzzatti et al., 1994; Zoccolotti, Angelelli, Judica, &

Luzzatti, 2006). Phonological-to-orthographic conversion rules are insufficient to

obtain the correct spelling of words with ambiguous transcription and phonolog-

ically plausible errors may be taken as an indication of impaired spelling along the

lexical route (and over-reliance on the phoneme-to-grapheme conversion proce-

dure). Accordingly, a child with poor lexical knowledge may write *SCUALO

instead of SQUALO (=shark) since the correct spelling cannot be accessed when the

child is relying exclusively on the sublexical procedure (Angelelli et al., 2004;

Laiacona et al., 2004; Rapp et al., 2002).

The aim of the present study was to investigate the acquisition of the sublexical

and lexical spelling procedures, and their possible interaction, in Italian children.

We were particularly interested in evaluating if the lexical procedure is available in

young spellers, despite the high consistency of the print-to-sound mapping of this

4 Italian words with ambiguous transcription are both words with common and uncommon sound-to-

spelling mapping. 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, CEand GE are more frequent than SCIE, CIE and GIE.


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language. We examined a sample of Italian normal readers from first to eighth grade

with a spelling test including regular words, words requiring the application of

context-sensitive rules, ambiguous words, and regular pseudowords. In line with the

DRM, we evaluated the effect of regularity (regular words and pseudowords vs.

ambiguous words) and that of orthographic complexity (regular words with one-

sound-to-one letter correspondence vs. context-sensitive words) as markers of the

sublexical procedure and the effect of lexicality (words vs. pseudowords) as a marker

of the lexical procedure (Coltheart, Rastle, Perry, Ziegler, & Langdon, 2001). We

were also interested in examining the effect of psycholinguistic variables, such as

word frequency, age of acquisition (AoA) and word length, on the spelling of

ambiguous words at different levels of literacy acquisition. Focusing on ambiguous

word spelling should prove informative because, as described before, little is known

about the establishment and consolidation of lexical processing in shallow

orthographies. Moreover, ambiguous words may be considered critical for the

assessment of Italian children; in fact, previous studies reported that performances on

ambiguous words discriminated very well between normal and impaired Italian

spellers (Angelelli et al., 2004; Angelelli, Notarnicola, Judica, Zoccolotti, & Luzzatti,

2010). Therefore, it seemed important establishing the relative contribution of the two

spelling procedures on the processing of these stimuli.

Method

Participants

A group of 465 children from first to eighth grade was examined. The children

attended state schools in and around Rome (central Italy) and Bari (southern Italy).

Criteria for inclusion in the sample were: Parental permission, Italian as native

language, normal reading level as assessed by a standard reading test (Test MT,

Cornoldi & Colpo, 1998, see below), normal non-verbal intelligence as measured by

the Colored Progressive Matrices (Raven, 1996), and adequate socio-educational

conditions. Age ranged from 6 years and 7 months to 14 years and 9 months. Basic

information on the sample is presented in Table 1.

Reading assessment

The reading level was assessed using a standard reading achievement test (MT

Reading test, Cornoldi & Colpo, 1998). Two meaningful text passages were given.

The participant had to read aloud the first text passage within a 4-min time limit;

speed (time in seconds per number of syllables read) and accuracy (number of

errors, adjusted for the amount of text read) were computed. The second passage

had to be read silently or aloud without a time limit and the participant had to

answer 10 multiple-choice questions (comprehension index). Stimulus materials and

related reference norms vary depending on school grade. Children with a

pathological performance for reading speed and/or accuracy according to standard

normative data (Cornoldi & Colpo, 1998) were excluded.


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Spelling assessment

The participants’ spelling abilities were tested with a standard Spelling test

(Angelelli et al., 2008), composed of four sections:

Section A: Regular words (words with complete one-sound-to-one-letter

correspondence; N = 70). Words were selected with different sources ofphonetic-phonological complexity: (1) words made up of continuant sounds only

(fricative, liquid or nasal consonants) versus words also containing non-continuant

(plosive) consonants; (2) words made up only of consonant–vowel (CV) syllables

versus words also containing consonant clusters and doubled consonants; and (3)

bisyllabic versus polysyllabic words. The presence of different sources of phonetic-

phonological complexity allows considering variables influencing both segmenta-

tion and identification of the phonemic string to be converted (for instance,

continuous phones are by their nature easiest to segment, and hence to identify, than

non-continuant phones).

Section B: Context-sensitive words (words requiring the application of context-

sensitive sound-to-spelling rules; N = 10). In Italian, the orthographic realization ofsequences involving [k], [g], [t∫], [dʒ] is determined by context sensitive rules anddepends on the letters that follow (e.g., [k] in [kaza], (home) is spelt CASA, but in

[kiesa], (church) is spelt CHIESA) (N = 10).Section C: Ambiguous words (words with two or more possible transcriptions

along the phonological-to-orthographic conversion routine; N = 55). This sectionincluded: (1) words containing the phonemic group [kw], which in Italian may be

transcribed by the orthographic sequences QU, CU, or CQU; (2) words containing

the syllables [t∫e], [∫e], and [dʒe], which may or may not require an I (e.g.,[∫entsa], science, is spelt SCIENZA and not *SCENZA, while [∫ena], scene, isspelt SCENA and not *SCIENA); (3) words containing plosive phones followed by

the liquid consonants [r] which are homophones to their doubled pairs (e.g.,

FEBBRE, fever and not *FEBRE, but LIBRO, book, and not *LIBBRO); (4) words

containing the segments [lj] − [ʎ] and [nj] − [ɲ], that are homophonous in most

Table 1 Clinical and demographic characteristics of the sample: means and standard deviations

Grade N Gender Age Raven Accuracy Speed Comprehension

MT battery

1 69 F = 30/M = 39 6.77 ± .30 20.46 ± 3.44 4.7 ± 2.76 .8 ± .38 8.07 ± 1.59

2 75 F = 39/M = 36 7.65 ± .43 24.76 ± 3.72 6.04 ± 3.86 .49 ± .17 7.55 ± 1.55

3 58 F = 28/M = 30 8.62 ± .39 28.83 ± 3.89 4.49 ± 3.21 .40 ± .17 8.12 ± 1.43

4 98 F = 37/M = 61 9.53 ± .54 26.33 ± 3.69 5.15 ± 2.55 .31 ± .06 7.67 ± 1.64

5 67 F = 37/M = 30 10.62 ± .43 30.51 ± 3.75 5.19 ± 3.14 .28 ± .05 8.19 ± 1.38

6 33 F = 17/M = 16 11.98 ± .42 23.4 ± 1.96 7.98 ± 3.69 .24 ± .06 8.61 ± 1.86

7 34 F = 16/M = 18 12.82 ± .30 27.79 ± 3.78 6.65 ± 3.11 .22 ± .04 7.03 ± 1.17

8 31 F = 22/M = 9 13.90 ± .37 29.04 ± 3.38 4.72 ± 2.43 .17 ± .02 8.09 ± 1.55

Total 465 F = 226/M = 239 Range

6–15

Range

12–36

Range

0–18

Range

.14–2.19

Range

3–10


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Italian variants to the extent that [biljardo/biʎardo], billiards, is spelt BILIARDOand not *BIGLIARDO, while [folja/foʎa], leaf, is spelt FOGLIA and not *FOLIA;similarly [opinjone/opiɲone], opinion, is spelt OPINIONE and not *OPIGNONE,while [oɲuno/onjuno], everybody, is spelt OGNUNO and not *ONIUNO.

Section D: Regular pseudowords (not lexical units with one-sound-to-one-letter

correspondence; N = 25). Items were controlled for different sources of phonetic-phonological complexity, as were the words in Section A: (1) continuance of sounds

(pseudowords with continuant vs. non-continuant consonants); syllabic structure

(pseudowords with consonant–vowel (CV) syllables vs. pseudowords containing

doubled consonants); and length (bysillabic vs. 3–4 syllable pseudowords). Similar

to section A, the phonetic/phonological variables are introduced for taking into

account variables influencing the acoustic-to-phonological analysis that is

preliminary to an effective phonological-to-orthographic conversion procedure

(Table 2).

Words and pseudowords were given in separate runs and in a single quasi-

randomized order. The examiner read each item aloud in a neutral tone, i.e., without

emphasizing the presence of clusters, double consonants, or possible orthographic

ambiguities. The children were asked to repeat each item before writing it down (so

that the examiner could ensure that they had perceived the item). When the child

failed to repeat or upon his/her request, the examiner read the stimulus again. This

occurred in a very limited number of cases (about 1%), and the second repetition

proved always adequate to obtain a correct repetition of the item. Children were

permitted to write in either capital or lower case letters. No feedback was provided

on the accuracy of the written response. Final responses were considered,

irrespective of the correctness of the first attempt. In fact, we were interested to

analyze what the child considered his/her best (final) response. At any rate, self-

corrections were quite rare. Children were tested individually.

Analysis of data

Quantitative analysis

First, the number of items correctly written by all participants in the four sections of

the test was computed.

A Mixed Model ANOVA was performed with grade as between-subjects factor

(8 levels: grade 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8), and type of stimuli as within-subjects factor

(4 levels: regular words, context sensitive words, ambiguous words, and regular

pseudowords). The post-hoc Newman–Keuls test was used to decompose

interactions.

A trend analysis was performed in order to identify the function/s that best

describe the development of subjects’ performances at the different sections of the

Spelling test (regular words, context-sensitive words, ambiguous words, regular

pseudowords).

In order to assess which variables influence ambiguous word spelling, a series of

stepwise multiple regressions were performed, separately for each grade. In


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particular, we examined the relative contributions of AoA, word frequency, and

word length in predicting the accuracy of ambiguous words spelling.

AoA values were computed adopting the same procedure used by Barca, Burani,

and Arduino (2002). Forty adults (range of age: 22–33 years; females = 20,

males = 20) were requested to estimate the AoA of the 55 ambiguous words on a

five-point scale. Word frequency was computed from a word frequency dictionary

for children (based on a corpus of 500,000 stimuli; Marconi, Ott, Pesenti, Ratti, &

Tavella, 1993) and also from a word frequency dictionary for adults (Bortolini,

Tagliavini, & Zampolli, 1972). Frequency values were log-transformed. Word

length was calculated as number of letters (range: 4–10 letters). Values of AoA,

frequency, and length are reported in the “Appendix” for each ambiguous word.

Table 2 Subtests of the writing task (Angelelli et al., 2008)

Examples (translation) Continuance Cluster Doubled

consonants

Syllables N

(A) Regular words with one-sound-to-one-letter correspondence (n = 70)

1 sole (sun) Yes No No 2 10

2 lavoro/semaforo

(work/traffic light)

Yes No No 3/4 10

3 senso (sense) Yes Yes No 2 10

4 valle (valley) Yes No Yes 2 10

5 dito (finger) No No No 2 10

6 prato (meadow) No Yes No 2 10

7 tappo (cork) No No Yes 2 10

Examples Rule N

(B) Context-sensitive words (n = 10)

8 gola/ghiro/valigia (throat/dormouse/suitcase) [k], [g], [t∫], [dʒ] 10

Examples (translation) Ambiguity N

(C) Words with ambiguous transcription (n = 55)

9 scena/scienza (scene/science) [t∫e], [∫e], [dʒe] ± i 1010 paglia/balia (straw/nurse) [ʎ]: GL/LI 1011 segno/genio (sign/genius) [ɲ]: GN/NI 1012 libro/febbre (book/fever) BR/BBR 10

13 cuore/quota/aquila (heart/rate/eagle) [kw]: CU/QU 15

Examples Continuance Cluster Doubled consonant Syllables N

(D) Pseudowords with one-sound-to-one-letter correspondence (n = 25)

1 Nise Yes No No 2 5

2 vimàne/ramàsola Yes No No 3/4 5

3 seffa Yes No No 2 5

4 tido No No Yes 2 5

5 nitta No No No 2 5


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Finally, we applied to spelling data the equation:

PðregÞ ¼ PðirregÞ þ ð1� PðirregÞÞ � PðnwdÞoriginally developed by Coltheart (2000) and Coltheart et al. (2001) for predicting

reading ability. In this way, we aimed to predict the spelling performance on regular

words from the performance on irregular (ambiguous) words (an estimate of the

competence of the lexical route) or that on pseudowords (an estimate of the

competence of the sublexical route).

The rationale is as follows: Ambiguous words are spelt primarily by using the

lexical procedure and pseudowords by using the sublexical procedure. On the other

hand, regular words can be spelt in either way. If regular words are spelt

sublexically, then the correlation between obtained accuracy on pseudowords and

obtained accuracy on regular words (robtRW.obtPW) should be high. Similarly, ifregular words are spelt via a lexical strategy, then the correlation between obtained

accuracy on regular words and ambiguous words (robtRW.obtAW) should be high. Ifboth of these procedures are involved in the spelling of regular words, the

correlation between predicted and obtained accuracy on regular word spelling

(robtRW.predRW) should be higher than the two previous correlations (i.e., robtRW.obtAW and robtRW.obtPW). To test the significance of the differences betweencorrelation coefficients the Fisher r-to-z transformation was used.

We applied this equation to data from the general sample. Furthermore, we

performed separate correlations only for the first four grades since the trend analysis

(see below) showed a plateau of performance around third-fourth grade.

Error analysis

The nature of the spelling errors was analyzed irrespective of the section of the test

to which the target item belonged. Errors were coded as:

(I) Phonologically plausible errors (impaired spellings along the lexical route):

Spellings that can be pronounced to sound like the target words. These errors

arise from the over-application of the phoneme-to-grapheme conversion

routine and include:

(a) Errors in the absence of an orthographic rule: Spellings are phonolog-

ically plausible, but lexically incorrect [e.g., *CUOTA instead of

QUOTA (=rate)];

(b) Errors violating an orthographic rule: These errors consisted in the

insertion of the silent H in the orthographic realization of sequences

involving [k] and [g] [e.g., *DIGHA instead of DIGA (dam), *CHASA

instead of CASA (house), see section B in the Spelling assessment

paragraph];

(c) Phonologically plausible doubling of a single consonant: These errors

mainly consisted in the doubling of the sequences involving [dʒ] [e.g.,*ADAGGIO instead of ADAGIO (adagio), *VALIGGIA instead of

VALIGIA (suitcase)]; they are considered among the phonologically


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plausible errors because they are related to the pronunciation of the

specific linguistic area of the study.

(II) Errors based on minimal distance features: Substitutions of consonants or

vowels that differ only in a single distinctive feature [e.g., sonority, FINO

(until) instead of VINO (wine), coronality *CLINA instead of CLIMA

(climate), continuance PESTA (pounds) instead of FESTA (party)].

(III) Doubling of a single consonant or de-doubling of a doubled consonant [e.g.,

*BUCCO instead of BUCO (hole); *TAPO instead of TAPPO (cap)]. These

spellings are not phonologically plausible in Italian.

(IV) Context-sensitive errors: Failures to apply the rules regulating the ortho-

graphic transcription of a consonant when it is determined by the following

vowel [e.g., *ADAGO instead of ADAGIO (adage) or GIRO instead of

GHIRO (dormouse)];

(V) Non-minimal-distance substitutions [e.g., *BALO instead of BACO (worm)],

omissions [e.g.,*VSONE instead of VISONE (mink)], insertions [e.g.,

*MANRMO instead of MARMO (marble)], and letter transpositions [e.g.,

*PATRO instead of PRATO (meadow)]. For the sake of brevity, this category

is referred to as other errors.

We considered phonologically plausible errors (errors Ia–Ib–Ic) as signs of

failure of the lexical procedure and of reliance on sublexical procedure and all the

other categories of errors (errors II–V) as signs of failure of the sublexical

procedure.

To investigate the higher-order factor structure underpinning variations between

the different types of errors, a principal component analysis (Varimax rotation) was

performed on the raw scores for the different error categories. On the factor scores

extracted from this analysis, a trend analysis was performed, similar to that used for

the quantitative analysis.

Results

Quantitative analysis

Mean percentages of correct responses as a function of type of stimuli and grade are

shown in Fig. 1.

The ANOVA showed a significant main effect of grade, F(7, 457) = 38.91,p \ .001, and of type of stimulus, F(3, 1,371) = 302.64, p \ .001. A significantinteraction between these factors was present, F(21, 1,371) = 7.07, p \ .001. Thisinteraction was decomposed to examine the presence and timing of the regularity,

lexicality and orthographic complexity effects. At all grades, children were more

accurate on regular items (words and pseudowords) than on ambiguous words

(regularity effect; all p \ .01 from first to eighth grade, Newman–Keuls test);however, this difference progressively decreased from first (Δ = 20%) to eighthgrade (Δ = 6%). A ceiling effect was apparent for regular words around fourthgrade while the spelling of ambiguous words improved throughout the period


123

examined. Children were more accurate on regular words than on pseudowords

(lexicality effect) from first to fourth grade (for all comparisons, p \ .001). Theperformance on context-sensitive words was poorer than that on regular words

(from first to fourth grade; p \ .01) and pseudowords (from first to third grade,p \ .01; orthographic complexity effect). Overall, children had a high rate ofaccuracy on regular words already by first grade (89%), on regular pseudowords by

second grade (88%), and on context-sensitive words by third grade (around 90%).

By contrast, ambiguous words reached similar levels of performance only in sixth-

seventh grade (87–90%).

The trend analysis showed similar results for regular stimuli (words and

pseudowords): A stronger linear trend accounting for 49% of the variance for

words and 52% for pseudowords, F(1, 457) = 77.59, p \ .001 for words and,F(1, 457) = 83.76, p \ .001 for pseudowords, and a quadratic trend accounting for19% of the variance for both types of stimuli, F(1, 457) = 30.62, p \ .001 forwords and, F(1, 457) = 30.76, p \ .001 for pseudowords, indicating a plateau ofperformance around third-fourth grade. Context-sensitive words also followed a

similar trend: A linear trend accounted for 64% of the variance, F(1, 457) = 78.58,p \ .001, and a quadratic trend for 13% of the variance, F(1, 457) = 16.02,p \ .001. In the case of ambiguous words, a strong linear trend accounted for 76%of the variance, F(1, 457) = 248.62, p \ .001, while only a small percentage of thevariance (4%) was explained by the quadratic trend, F(1, 457) = 14.29, p \ .001.

As for variables influencing the spelling of ambiguous words, the regression

analyses indicated that, in first grade, the model accounted for 23% of variance,

F(2, 54) = 7.86, p\ .001. Word length entered on step 1 accounting for 15% of thevariance, followed by AoA which explained 6% of the additional variance; the

Fig. 1 Mean percentage of accuracy on the four sections of the writing task as a function of grade


123

contribution of word frequency was not significant. In children from second through

eighth grade, AoA was the only significant predictor accounting for between 14 and

23% of unique variance depending on the grade considered. In all cases, word

frequency and length were not significant.

Finally, we applied the equation developed by Coltheart (2000) and Coltheart

et al. (2001) to predict the spelling performance on regular words from that on

irregular (ambiguous) words and pseudowords. Correlations between obtained and

predicted accuracy on regular words (robtRW.predRW) as well as obtained accuracy onregular words and pseudowords (robtRW.obtPW) and obtained accuracy on regular andambiguous words (robtRW.obtAW) are presented in Table 3.

Over the total sample, the correlation between obtained and predicted accuracy

on regular words was high (robtRW.predRW = .92), as expected. The correlationbetween obtained accuracy on regular words and pseudowords was .87 and that

between obtained accuracy on regular and ambiguous words was .70. Using the

Fisher r-to-z transformation, the robtRW.predRW was significantly greater than theother two correlations (robtRW.obtPW: z = 3.89, p \ .0001; and robtRW.obtAW:z = 10.97, p \ .0001). This pattern was generally confirmed when each grade wasseparately evaluated (i.e., higher robtRW.predRW than robtRW.obtPW and robtRW.obtAW).However, note that differences between robtRW.predRW, on the one hand, and robtRW.obtAW, on the other hand, were quantitatively larger and significant at all grades

tested (at least p \ .01). By contrast, differences between robtRW.predRW and robtRW.obtPW were quantitatively smaller and not significant.

This pattern of findings is generally consistent with the view that spelling regular

words benefits from the interaction/cooperation of both spelling procedures, a

prediction based on the proposal by Coltheart et al. (2001). The smaller differences

between robtRW.predRW and robtRW.obtPW (as compared to the same correlation withthe obtained accuracy on ambiguous words) is in keeping with a greater role of the

sublexical routine in spelling of Italian children.

Table 3 Correlations between obtained and predicted regular word accuracy and obtained accuracy onregular words, pseudowords and ambiguous words (see text for details)

Correlations between obtained regular word accuracy and

Grade N Predicted regularword accuracy

Obtained pseudoword

accuracy

Obtained ambiguous

word accuracy

robtRW.predRW robtRW.obtPW robtRW.obtAW

1 69 .92* .89* .74*, °

2 75 .90* .88* .68*, °

3 58 .77* .64* .55*, °

4 98 .81* .75* .46*, °

Total sample 465 .92* .87*, ° .70*, °

* p \ .01 (significance of the correlation); ° p \ .01 (significance of the difference of the correlationwith the corresponding robtRW.predRW)


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Error analysis

Error means are reported in Fig. 2 as a function of grade and error type.

Inspection of the figure shows that phonologically plausible errors were prevalent

at all grades. All other types of errors decreased with schooling, being present only

in first to third grade.

The principal component analysis on the 10 error categories extracted a structure

with two factors (eigenvalues [ 1.00), accounting for 40.66 and 17.93% of thevariance, respectively. The model explained 58.6% of cumulate variance. Factor

loadings in excess of 0.5 on the rotated factor matrix are displayed in Table 4.

The seven variables loading highly on factor 1 indicated all not phonologically

plausible errors representing inaccurate spellings via the sublexical procedure. Thus,

we refer to this factor as sublexical failure.The highest loadings on factor 2 were the three types of phonologically plausible

errors (errors Ia–Ic). Factor 2 appears to mark spellings along the lexical route.

Thus, we call this factor lexical failure.Similarly to what we did for the quantitative analysis, a trend analysis was

performed on factor scores. Factor scores of the sublexical failure factor were

explained by a linear, F(1, 457) = 21.15, p \ .001, 48% of variance, and aquadratic trend, F(1, 457) = 29.04, p \ .001, with 20% of explained variance,indicating a plateau around third-fourth grade. The factor scores of the lexical

failure factor were explained only by a linear trend, F(1, 457) = 11.59, p \ .001,with 73% of explained variance.

Fig. 2 Error means according to the various typologies of errors as function of grade


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Discussion

Both quantitative and error analyses indicated that Italian children used the lexical

and sublexical spelling processes from the first year of school.

As for sublexical spelling, at all grades children were more accurate on regular

stimuli (whether words or pseudowords) than ambiguous words (regularity effect).

It is worth noting that pseudowords were spelt more accurately than ambiguous

words at all grades. Therefore, the regularity effect was stronger than the lexicality

one. Moreover, regular words were spelt more accurately than context-sensitive

words (orthographic complexity effect). Both effects point to reliance on the

sublexical spelling procedure. Conversely, the results also indicated an early use of

the lexical spelling process. Namely, regular words were spelt more accurately than

regular pseudowords from first to eighth grade. The presence of a lexicality effect

already in first grade confirms previous observations by Cossu et al. (1995). Note

that performance on regular words benefited from the successful cooperation

between the lexical and sublexical processing; therefore, the word advantage over

pseudowords should not be viewed as an exclusive recourse to the lexicon (further

comments on the cooperation between the two routes are presented below).

In line with results on accuracy scores, also the error analyses supported the

presence of the two spelling procedures from the early stage of spelling. The factor

analysis on error types indicated a structure with two factors, one accounting for all

errors indicating failure of the sublexical route and the other for all phonologically

plausible errors (indicating a failure of the lexical route).

Notably, the two processes showed different developmental trends. Accuracy on

pseudoword spelling showed a rapid increase followed a plateau around third-fourth

grade, while accuracy on ambiguous words increased throughout the period tested.

These data indicate an earlier and more rapid development for the sublexical

procedure and a more gradual acquisition in the case of the lexical procedure. The

analyses on the error types generally confirmed these differential trends.

Table 4 Factor loading in excess of .5 on the rotated factor matrix

Variable Factor 1 Factor 2

PP errors in absence of an orthographic rule .44 .59

PP errors violating an orthographic rule .06 .75

PP errors consisting in doubling a single

consonant

−.01 .69

Non PP doubling/de-doubling errors .61 .44

Minimal distance substitutions .61 .31

Non-minimal distance substitutions .86 −.04

Omissions .85 .05

Insertions .78 .07

Letter transpositions .77 .09

Context-sensitive errors .68 .31

PP Phonologically plausible


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Overall, both quantitative and error analyses showed that, in Italian, the two

conversion processes of the sublexical route (acoustic-to-phonological and

phoneme-to-grapheme) are optimized early, i.e., within the first 3 years of

schooling. Conversely, even though signs of the recourse to orthographic

representations are detected early, optimization in the use of the lexical route is

reached quite slowly. This is consistent with the idea that orthographic proficiency

depends upon how many lexical representations are stored and how well specified

they are to support accurate spelling (Romani, Di Betta, Tsouknida, & Olson, 2008).

The present results are based on a cross-sectional study. A confirmation of these

developmental trends based on a longitudinal study would be important.

The present data seem generally consistent with previous studies on relatively

regular languages such as Czech, Turkish, German, and Spanish (see Caravolas,

2004 for a review). In these studies, a ceiling effect is reported for pseudoword

spelling by the first or second grade of primary school. They also appear consistent

with studies on other European orthographies, more transparent than English but

more opaque than Italian, such as French (Fernandes et al., 2008; Sprenger-

Charolles et al., 2003), the present data showed an early development of sublexical

spelling and reliance on sublexical processing even when indicators of lexical

processing appeared. In particular, Sprenger-Charolles et al. (2003) reported that

French children spelt regular items (words and pseudowords) more accurately than

irregular items across all grades tested (1–4) and, similarly to our data, found a

ceiling effect for pseudowords by third grade (92% of accuracy). Similarly, our

results showed that, in Italian, the regularity effect is larger than the lexicality effect,

with better processing of pseudowords than ambiguous words. This finding indicates

the prevalent reliance on the sublexical procedure (with respect to the lexical one)

also in Italian, in agreement with the hypothesis that reliance on the different

procedures depends on the degree of regularity of a language.

With regard to the development of lexical spelling, our results are inconsistent

with the view which denies the presence of the lexical route in relatively regular

languages (Ardila, 1991; Ardila et al., 1989; Frost et al., 1987). By contrast, they are

in line with previous studies of reading (e.g., Marcolini et al., 2008; Zoccolotti et al.,

2009) and spelling (Cossu et al., 1995) in Italian showing an early use of lexical

process also in relatively regular orthography.

For example, in a recent study on the development of reading in Italian,

Zoccolotti et al. (2009) found that, at the end of first grade, children read words

faster and more accurately than pseudowords (lexicality effect) indicating activation

of the lexicon at early stages of literacy acquisition, a finding that the present results

extend to the spelling domain. It is also of note that, for first graders, we found that

length had a high predictive value on ambiguous words spelling. This latter result is

coherent with what reported for reading in Italian (Zoccolotti et al., 2009): Length

was a powerful factor in modulating reading performance at early stages of learning

and became progressively less critical later on in the case of words (particularly

high frequency words). The authors interpreted the length effect as evidence of a

prevalent reliance on sublexical processes in young readers. Similarly, the length

effect on ambiguous word spelling may indicate the possible role of the sublexical

procedure in spelling this kind of stimuli in beginners. However, the significant


123

effect of length in spelling ambiguous words may also be interpreted as evidence of

the operation of the graphemic buffer. It is known that longer stimuli place grater

demands on a limited buffer and is possible that the length effect is the result of the

smaller working memory spans of younger children. Since no measure of working

memory was included in the present study, these two alternative interpretations

cannot be teased apart on the basis of the present data.

Unlike the sublexical route, results on the development of the lexical route partly

deviated from those on French and Portuguese. In fact, the present results also

showed early signs of reliance on the lexical procedure since the first grade of

schooling, with a lexicality effect (regular words spelt better than pseudowords) and

early positive influence of a lexical variable, such as AoA, on ambiguous words

spelling. By contrast, in French (Sprenger-Charolles et al., 2003), the lexicality

effect never favored spelling of words (whether regular or irregular) with respect to

pseudowords. In Portuguese (Fernandes et al., 2008), the lexicality effect appeared

later in development. In line with other studies on opaque languages (for a review

see Caravolas, Hulme, & Snowling, 2001) the authors of these two studies argued

that skilled lexical spelling requires a foundation in sublexical transcoding ability

that, in turn, enables the formation of orthographic representations. Conversely, in

Italian both procedures seem to act in parallel and are available since an early phase

of literacy acquisition. This latter result may be ascribed to different factors, such as

the different ages of participants (we tested our participants at the end of each level

of schooling while, in the French and Portuguese studies, testing occurred earlier),

or educational methods (in Italy many teachers start with a global approach instead

of the phonic method). Further investigations are needed to clarify this issue.

Overall, our results show parallel and early acquisition of both procedures. This

pattern is not consistent with stage models, such as those of Frith (1985) or Morton

(1989).

As for the interrelationship between the two routes, our data support the view of

an interaction between the lexical and the sublexical processes also in children, with

a possible prevailing role of the latter. The direction of this interaction may depend

upon the type of stimuli to be processed. The difficulty in spelling ambiguous words

may arise as a consequence of the fact that lexical and sublexical processes produce

conflicting responses in the case of words whose correct orthographic solution

contain an uncommon sound-to-spelling mapping (i.e., SCIENZA). Thus, also when

orthographic representations in the orthographic lexicon of the lexical procedure are

acquired, prevalent reliance on the sublexical routine may produce a conflicting

output, increasing the probability of making an error. By contrast, the higher

accuracy on regular words (with respect to ambiguous words and pseudowords) may

depend on the successful cooperation between the lexical and sublexical procedures

in producing the correct output. Finally, the early efficiency of sublexical grapheme-

to-phoneme procedure may contrast the effect of a strong lexical competitor,

generating a high rate of phonological plausible errors at all levels of schooling.

The differential developmental trend for ambiguous words and pseudowords (as

well as the evidence of their interaction in regular word spelling) clearly support the

dual-route architecture, in which the two spelling processes are well distinguished (e.

g., Kreiner, 1992; Perry, Ziegler, & Coltheart, 2002) although they mutually influence


123

each other (e.g., Rapp et al., 2002). By contrast, they appear less consistent with the

PDP model; in this case, knowledge of word spellings is represented in a network of

interconnected phonological, orthographic, and semantic units and no distinction

between lexical and sublexical processes is made (Graham, Patterson, & Hodges,

1997, 2000). Similarly, the present pattern of findings does not support models that

postulate a single procedure for spelling irregular words and pseudowords (e.g.,

Brown & Loosemore, 1994; Bullinaria, 1994; Olson & Caramazza, 1994).

Finally, the effect of AoA on ambiguous words spelling merits special consid-

eration. Several developmental studies investigated the role of word frequency while

fewer have been concerned with the influence of AoA. Data on Italian showed that

AoA does not influence reading in adults (Barca et al., 2002; Bates, Burani, D’Amico,

& Barca, 2001) while modulates childrens’ reading (Mazzotta, Barca, Marcolini,

Stella, & Burani, 2005) and spelling (Rinaldi & Burani, 2005). Mazzotta et al. (2005)

showed that Italian children attending primary school were faster in reading words

acquired earlier in the spoken language. Similarly, Rinaldi and Burani (2005) reported

a relationship between word acquisition in spoken language and items used in a

spontaneous spelling task: Words acquired earlier in the spoken language were those

used in spontaneous written texts since first grade.

In conclusion, the analysis of the spelling performance of Italian children

documented an early use of both lexical and sublexical spelling procedures (that

showed differential developmental trends). The DRM appears as a useful theoretical

framework to describe spelling in a developmental context and in a relatively

regular language such as Italian and seems preferable to the PDP model or to models

with single procedure to explain the pattern of data.

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

Appendix

See Table 5.

Table 5 De-randomized list of words with ambiguous transcription

Items AoA WF

(children)

WF

(adults)

Length

(no. of

letters)

Items AoA WF

(children)

WF

(adults)

EA Length

(no. of

letters)

Scienza 3.80 87 31 7 Zebra 2.80 12 0 2.80 5

Coscienza 5.03 9 34 9 Litro 3.45 35 12 3.45 5

Igiene 4.33 0 5 6 Cetra 5.70 0 0 5.70 5

Società 5.07 71 110 7 Febbre 2.37 40 16 2.37 6

Usciere 5.23 0 0 7 Labbro 3.00 91 34 3.00 6

Ascella 3.70 0 0 7 Quattro 2.20 434 193 2.20 7

Gente 2.87 524 202 5 Fabbro 4.13 16 0 4.13 6


123

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Items AoA WF

(children)

WF

(adults)

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(no. of

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(children)

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(adults)

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(no. of

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Development of spelling skills in a shallow orthography: the case of Italian languageAbstractIntroductionMethodParticipantsReading assessmentSpelling assessment

Analysis of dataQuantitative analysisError analysis

ResultsQuantitative analysisError analysis

DiscussionAcknowledgmentsAppendixReferences

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Development of spelling skills in a shallow orthography: the case … · children at different stages of acquisition of a shallow orthography (Italian). The dual-route model assumes