An investigation of task requirements associated with the invented spellings of 4-year-olds with above average intelligence

This study examined whether conscious use of phonological knowledge is associ-ated with invented spelling and whether a relation exists between invented spelling and reading. Thirty-two 4-year-olds with scores of 116 or higher on the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Test were classified as Non-spellers and Inventive Spellers based on their spellings of 10 words on the Invented Spelling Test. All subjects were administered 11 different tasks which examined alphabet knowledge, word seg-mentation, sound/letter association, and reading knowledge. Results indicated that all subjects displayed a similar ability when required to recite the alphabet, recog-nize uppercase letter names, segment words into syllables, and identify basic concepts about print. Inventive Spellers demonstrated superiority at letter/sound identification and segmentation of words by phonemes. Although significant differ-ences were observed between Non-spellers and Inventive Spellers on word-knowledge tasks, dramatic differences among Inventive Spellers were evident. Forty-four percent of the Inventive Spellers were found to be Proficient Word Readers whereas the remaining 56 % displayed reading proficiency at a similar level as the Non-spellers. A relation was found between spelling ability and conscious use of phonological knowledge; however, word reading appeared to be a related (but separate) ability from word writing. Awareness has grown regarding the ability of young children to invent their own spelling systems before they are capable of either engaging in conventional spelling activities or reading written sentences. Read (1971) discovered "invented spelling, " that is children's ability to attend to sound units in words and associate letters with those units in a systematic though nonconventional way before being 1 at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on May 12, 2016jlr.sagepub.comDownloaded fro