Spelling Error Profiles of Able and Disabled Readers

The present study sought to determine if the spelling error patterns of 30 disabled readers differed from the error patterns of 40 younger able readers and 37 able readers of the same age. Discriminant analyses indicated distinguishing patterns, primarily between the disabled readers and the older able readers. The use of phonetic strategies seemed to constitute the major difference between the two groups. The disabled readers exhibited more unrecognizable spellings when spelling either regular or irregular words. The current study was suggested by the early work of Boder (1971, 1973), who studied reading-spelling patterns of children with developmental dyslexia. Boder identified three distinct spelling patterns: dysphonetic, dyseidetic, and dysphonetic-dyseidetic. The first group did not spell words phonetically even when they made errors. The second grou