SPELLING-ERRORS IN SPANISH

The main purpose of this paper was to see whether dual-route models of spelling, developed within the context of opaque languages and supported mainly by the spelling patterns of acquired dysgraphics, could account for the misspellings of Spanish children of different educational levels. Sixty children (20 second, 20 fourth and 20 eighth graders) were dictated 216 verbal stimuli. Half of these stimuli were words and the other half were matched nonwords. The dependent variable was the number of errors made. Words were controlled for frequency, length and regularity. Results show that second graders rely heavily on phonological mediation with: a) a significantly higher number of errors committed in words than in nonwords; b) length affects accuracy, with more errors produced on longer words (or nonwords); and c) regular words are spelled significantly better than irregular words. Eighth graders, on the other hand, show the complementary pattern of results and, consequently, seem to use a lexical strategy (via the graphemic output lexicon). The only deviant result in this group is a significant regularity effect, although the degree of this effect is smaller than in second graders. Fourth grade children show an intermediate pattern. A qualitative analysis (error types) also supports predictions made by the dual-route models. Some final considerations are proposed to explain the regularity effect in eighth graders and, based on the pattern of phonological errors, the possibility of a functional interdependence of both strategies of spelling. © 1990 Kluwer Academic Publishers.