Spelling in adults: Orthographic transparency, learning new letter strings and reading accuracy

Five experiments examined differences in spelling production, spelling acquisition and reading accuracy in adults. Experiment 1A confirmed the effects of spelling ability and orthographic transparency on spelling production reported by Fischer, Shankweiler and Liberman (1985), and provided qualified support for the differential superiority of good spellers on morphophonemic knowledge versus orthographic conventions. Experiment 1B extended the effects of orthographic transparency and spelling ability to familiar words. Good spellers were superior in recognition and recall of nonword spellings in Experiment 2, most markedly on long, pronounceable items. Good spellers also had higher recognition accuracy for confusable but not discriminable words that they had read in sentences, and displayed greater knowledge of confusable word meanings (Experiments 3A and 3B). They were no more accurate than poor spellers on memory for names they had read, indicating that their reading accuracy varies with the demands of comprehension (Experiment 3B). The results are consistent with a view that good spellers achieve more accurate learning of words' orthographies and better vocabulary knowledge in their reading than do poor spellers.