Children's Use of Phoneme-Grapheme ...

Journal of Educational Psychology 1993, Vol. 85, No. 3, 466-477

Copyright 1993 by the American Psychological Association, Inc. 0022-0663/93/$3.00

Children's Use of Phoneme-Grapheme Correspondences in Spelling: Roles of Position and Stress Rebecca Treiman, Denise Berch, and Sarah Weatherston Whether children's ability to use phoneme-grapheme correspondences in spelling is affected by the position of the phoneme in the word or syllable and by the stress of the syllable was examined. Experiment 1, conducted with monosyllabic nonwords, was performed with kindergartners and 1st graders. Experiments 2 and 3, conducted with bisyllabic nonwords, were carried out with 1st graders. Children spelled the first and last phonemes of nonwords more accurately than the middle phonemes. Also, children performed better on syllable-initial single consonants than on syllablefinal single consonants. Errors tended to be more common for phonemes in unstressed syllables than for phonemes in stressed syllables. Together, the results suggest that the context in which a phoneme occurs influences children's ability to spell it.

Learning to read and write involves learning the mappings between units in spoken words and units in printed words. For alphabetic writing systems, these units include phonemes and graphemes. Children must learn and use the link between the phoneme /m/ and the grapheme m and the link between /as/ and a. (For a key to the notation, see the Appendix.) In many homes and kindergarten and first-grade classes, children are taught links between individual letters and individual sounds. Children learn that m makes the sound /m/, that a makes the sound /ae/, and so forth. It is often assumed that once children have mastered isolated correspondences such as these, they can use the correspondences to spell and read words. For example, a child who knows that An/ corresponds to m can use this knowledge to spell words that contain Iml. The goal of the present research is to test this assumption. Is children's ability to use phoneme-grapheme correspondences indeed governed only by the intrinsic difficulty of the correspondences? Alternatively, does the context in which a correspondence occurs within a word affect children's ability to use it? The first hypothesis, which we call the intrinsic difficulty hypothesis, states that some phoneme-grapheme mappings are harder to learn and use than others. For example, the link

between I\J and r may be easy to learn because the letter name /ti/ contains the sound that the letter represents in the easily accessible initial position of the syllable. The link between /w/ and w may be harder to learn and remember because the name of the letter begins with /d/ rather than /w/ (Treiman, Weatherston, & Berch, in press). Children may have trouble acquiring the mapping between Id and e because Id sounds similar to /ae/ and Id, both of which are typically spelled as a (Read, 1975; Treiman, 1993a). These and other factors, including the frequency of the correspondence and whether the grapheme contains one letter or more than one letter, appear to contribute to the difficulty of learning phonemegrapheme correspondences (Treiman, 1993a). According to the intrinsic difficulty hypothesis, children who have mastered a correspondence should be able to use it in spelling all types of words. The relative difficulty of various phonemegrapheme correspondences should not vary with the positions in which the phonemes appear in words. A second hypothesis is that children are affected by the context in which a phoneme-grapheme correspondence occurs. According to this context hypothesis, children's ability to spell Ival with m varies with such things as the position of /nV in the word or syllable and the stress pattern of the word. Under some conditions, Iml may be much easier to spell than Id. Under other conditions, the superiority for Iml over Id may be attenuated or even reversed. If context were all that were important—a strong form of the context hypothesis— contextual factors could explain all of the observed differences among phoneme—grapheme correspondences. A weaker and more plausible form of the context hypothesis is that both context and intrinsic differences in difficulty among phoneme-grapheme correspondences contribute to differences in spelling accuracy. The intrinsic difficulty hypothesis and the context hypothesis suggest different explanations for children's spelling difficulties. Consider the finding that children learning to spell in English have more difficulty with vowels than with consonants (e.g., Jorm, 1977; Stage & Wagner, 1992; Treiman, 1993a). This difference may reflect intrinsic properties of vowel phonemes or of their spellings. In English, for example, vowel phonemes typically have more spellings than con-

Rebecca Treiman, Department of Psychology, Wayne State University; Denise Berch, Department of Psychology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; Sarah Weatherston, Bank Street College of Education, New York. This research was supported by National Science Foundation Grant DBS-9020956 and National Institute of Health Research Career Development Award HD 00769 to Rebecca Treiman. The article was prepared, in part, while Rebecca Treiman was at the Medical Research Council Applied Psychology Unit, Cambridge, England. We thank the schools and children who participated in the experiments. We also thank Marie Cassar, E. Daylene RichmondWelty, Richard Wagner, and an anonymous reviewer for their helpful comments. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Rebecca Treiman, Department of Psychology, Wayne State University, 71 West Warren Avenue, Detroit, Michigan 48202.

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PHONEME-GRAPHEME CORRESPONDENCES IN SPELLING sonant phonemes (Hanna, Hanna, Hodges, & Rudorf, 1966). Children may have trouble selecting the correct spelling for a vowel from among the several possibilities. Alternatively, or in addition, children's difficulties with vowels may reflect the positions in which vowels tend to occur in words. Vowels often appear in the middles of words, with consonants at the edges. This is especially true in spelling experiments, which often use consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) syllables as stimuli. If phonemes in the middles of words are hard to spell, children would be expected to perform poorly on vowels in these types of stimuli. In the discussion so far, we have focused on the intrinsic difficulty hypothesis and the context hypothesis in the case of spelling, but the same hypotheses arise for reading. Although some kinds of graphemes seem to be intrinsically more difficult than others, the context of a grapheme also appears to affect children's ability to read it. For example, children may correctly pronounce m when it occurs in the initial position of a CVC word or nonword but not when it occurs in the final position (Fowler, Liberman, & Shankweiler, 1977; Shankweiler & Liberman, 1972; Treiman & Baron, 1981). Such results suggest that children's ability to use grapheme-phoneme correspondences in pronouncing words and nonwords depends on the position of the grapheme in the word or syllable. The present experiments were designed to assess the intrinsic difficulty hypothesis and the context hypothesis in the case of spelling. We asked whether the context of a phoneme affects beginning spellers' ability to represent it. One factor that we considered was the position of the phoneme. Early investigators reported a serial position curve such that letters at the beginnings and ends of words were spelled more accurately than letters in the middles of words (Jensen, 1962; Kooi, Schultz, & Baker, 1965; Mendenhall, 1930). Jensen (1962) suggested that a given element is more difficult to spell when it occurs in a "difficult" serial position than when it occurs in an "easy" position. However, these early results do not allow us to pinpoint the domain of the serial position effect. The domain of the effect may be the word, with phonemes at the beginning and the end of a word being easier to spell than phonemes in the middle of a word. Alternatively, the domain of the effect may be the syllable, with phonemes at the beginning and the end of a syllable being easier to spell than phonemes in the middle of a syllable. Because the words used in the early studies varied in the locations of their syllable boundaries, it is difficult to tease apart these two possibilities. It is important to do so, however, to understand the causes of the position effects observed in spelling. If position in the word is critical, the word may be the basic unit of spelling. If syllables are important, some sort of syllablebased process would appear to be involved. A further limitation of the early studies is that they were carried out with students in Grades 3 and above. The results do not tell us whether children who are just starting to spell show serial position effects. Using nonwords, Stage and Wagner (1992) reported effects of position for children in kindergarten through third grade. In general, performance was best in syllable-initial position, next best in syllable-final position, and poorest in

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medial position. However, because most of the stimuli in Stage and Wagner's study were monosyllables, we do not know whether position in the syllable or position in the stimulus as a whole was the operative variable. Also, Stage and Wagner's stimuli were not uniform in their phonological structure. The medial phonemes of syllables were often vowels (e.g., the III of/firj/) but were sometimes consonants (e.g., the Ixl of /dre/, which was scored as a medial phoneme). Children have difficulty spelling the interior phonemes of syllable-initial and syllable-final consonant clusters (i.e., the second and third phonemes of two- and three-consonant initial clusters, such as /dr/ and /spl/, and the penultimate and antepenultimate phonemes of two- and three-consonant final clusters, such as /rd/ and /lps/; Read, 1975; Treiman, 1991, 1993a). Thus, we do not know to what extent the poor performance on medial phonemes found by Stage and Wagner (1992) reflects a difficulty with consonant clusters and to what extent it reflects a difficulty with all types of medial phonemes. Recently, Treiman (1993a) attempted to sort out the effects of position of the phoneme in the word and position of the phoneme in the syllable on one particular type of spelling error: omissions. Treiman (1993a) analyzed independent writings produced by 43 first graders. The children's teacher did not emphasize correct spelling; indeed, she did not tell children how to spell a word even if they asked. Because the words that the children chose to spell varied in length, frequency, and other factors, Treiman (1993a) used regression methods to analyze the omission data. She asked, for example, whether consonants in the middles of words were more likely to be omitted than expected once other factors were statistically taken into account. The results of the regression analyses suggested that both the position of the phoneme in the word and the position of the phoneme in the syllable had an effect. Phonemes in the middles of words, whether vowels or consonants, were more susceptible to omission than phonemes at the beginnings or the ends of words. Also, consonants at the ends of syllables were more often omitted than consonants at the beginnings of syllables. Although the naturalistic results are intriguing, it is important to determine whether they hold up in a more controlled situation. In Treiman's (1993a) study, as in any other study with naturalistic data, phonemes that appear in certain positions of words are not identical in their identities or their distributions to phonemes that appear in other positions of words. The higher omission rate for phonemes in the middles of words as compared with phonemes at the edges of words could reflect differences in the types of phonemes that occur in these positions rather than position effects per se. Similarly, the higher omission rate for syllable-final consonants than for syllable-initial ones could reflect differences in the consonants that appear in these two positions. In the present study, we attempted to strengthen the previous findings by using stimuli that were controlled for phonological structure, length, and other factors. In addition to investigating the effects of word position and syllable position on spelling accuracy, we also investigated the effects of stress. Most studies of spelling have focused on

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R. TREIMAN, D. BERCH, AND S. WEATHERSTON

the segmental features of words, that is, the vowel and consonant phonemes. What effects do suprasegmental features, such as stress, have on spelling performance? For example, are children better at spelling phonemes in stressed syllables than phonemes in unstressed syllables? Using regression methods, Treiman (1993a) found that first graders were more likely to omit phonemes in unstressed syllables than phonemes in stressed syllables. This held true not only for vowels, which are often considered the carriers of stress, but also for consonants. As discussed earlier, it is important to determine whether the results of the naturalistic study hold up in a more controlled situation in which stressed and unstressed syllables are equated for the specific phonemes that they contain. Recent results (Treiman, 1993b) point to an influence of stress. First graders produced fewer CVC spellings of a syllable such as Izorl when the syllable did not receive primary stress, as in /zor'wek/, than when the syllable did receive primary stress, as in /'zorwekA (The accent symbol, ', means that the following syllable has primary stress. The symbol is placed at the beginning of the stressed syllable, following Ladefoged, 1982, to indicate the assumed syllabification of the word.) Because stress was not the primary focus of the experiment, analyses were not carried out to determine whether stress effects occurred for both consonants and vowels. It has been claimed that adults do not show stress effects for consonants. In a study by Kreiner and Gough (1990), consonants in unstressed syllables were not misspelled more often than consonants in stressed syllables. However, the very low error rates in that study make it difficult to draw firm conclusions. The present experiments were designed to assess the effects of position and stress on children's ability to use phoneme-grapheme correspondences. To do so, we asked children to spell nonwords that varied in their phonological structure. We had several reasons for using nonwords as opposed to real words. First, children can spell familiar real words by recalling their conventional spellings. Nonwords cannot be spelled in this manner. We may therefore get a better picture of the phonological factors that affect spelling performance by examining nonwords. In addition, the phonological structure of nonwords can be controlled to a degree that is difficult or impossible to achieve with real words. For example, we can construct pairs of nonwords that are alike in number of phonemes and identity of phonemes and that vary only in their stress patterns. A final reason for using nonwords was to complement the results of the previous study by Treiman (1993a). We wished to compare the results of that study, which involved real words written in connected text in a classroom setting, with the results of the present experiments, which involved nonwords written in isolation in an experimental setting. Convergence between the naturalistic data and the experimental data would strengthen our confidence in the validity and reliability of the findings. The primary measure in the present experiments was the accuracy with which children spelled phonemes in various linguistic contexts, for example in syllable-initial position versus syllable-final position and in stressed syllables versus unstressed syllables. Secondary measures concerned properties of the letters that children used to spell the phonemes,

that is, the height and case (upper vs. lower) of the letters. For example, if children consider phonemes in stressed syllables as more salient than phonemes in unstressed syllables, they may more often capitalize phonemes in stressed syllables. Similarly, children may use larger letters for phonemes in stressed syllables. Previous studies have not investigated whether children systematically vary the form or size of their letters to represent the linguistic features of words. For example, Treiman (1993a) did not code information about the physical characteristics of children's spellings.

Experiment 1 In Experiment 1, first graders and kindergartners spelled monosyllabic CVC nonwords. On the basis of previous findings, we predicted that children would generally do best on initial consonants, next best on final consonants, and poorest on medial vowels. One question is whether the position effects would differ for first graders and kindergartners. Stage and Wagner (1992) found that first graders performed significantly better on final phonemes than on medial phonemes, whereas kindergartners did almost as poorly on final phonemes as on medial phonemes. Experiment 1 served as a basis for Experiment 2, in which children spelled bisyllabic nonwords with CVC$CVC structure and with primary stress on either the first or the second syllable. (The symbol $ indicates a syllable boundary.) This allowed us to compare children's performance on CVC syllables when they occurred in monosyllabic nonwords (Experiment 1) with their performance on these syllables when they occurred in bisyllabic nonwords (Experiment 2).

Method Stimuli. Each child spelled 16 CVC nonwords. The stimuli contained the consonants /p/ (spelled as p), l\l (spelled as t), Pol (spelled as b), IAI (spelled as d), Kl (spelled as / ) , hi (spelled as v), Igl (spelled as g), In/ (spelled as n), HI (spelled as I), /s/ (spelled as s), kl (spelled as r), and /ml (spelled as m), and the vowels /ae/ (spelled as a), Icl (spelled as e), III (spelled as i), lal (spelled as o), lei (spelled as a), l\l (spelled as e), /ai/ (spelled as i), and o (spelled as o). The listed spellings of these consonants and vowels are the most common representations of the phonemes in conventional English (Hanna et al., 1966; final e was ignored for "long" vowels) and in the previous study of first graders (Treiman, 1993a). Although the phonemes are sometimes spelled in other ways (e.g., hi is spelled with ee rather than i in been), we may consider the listed spellings as correct and appropriate representations of the phonemes. None of the stimuli in this or the following experiments contained a sequence of phonemes that matched the name of a consonant letter, such as /en/, the name of n. This restriction was imposed because beginning spellers sometimes omit vowels in lettername sequences (Treiman, 1993a, 1993b). Two lists of stimuli were constructed. The lists differed in the order of the phonemes in each nonword. For example, one list included /fot/ and dev/, and the other list included /tof/ and /ved/. Half of the children spelled each list. List 1 is presented in the Appendix; List 2 can be generated from it. Procedure. The children were tested in pairs. The order of the 16 nonwords was randomized for each pair of children. The ex-

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PHONEME-GRAPHEME CORRESPONDENCES IN SPELLING perimenter said that the children would be asked to spell some "made-up words." She stated that there was no right or wrong way to spell the nonwords and that the children should spell them however they thought best. The experimenter pronounced each nonword and asked the children to repeat it. The order in which the two children repeated the nonwords was alternated across stimuli. The experimenter ensured that each child repeated each nonword correctly before attempting to spell it by printing it on lined paper. The reading subtest of the Wide Range Achievement Test—Revised (WRAT-R; Jastak & Wilkinson, 1984) was given to each child individually after the spelling test was completed, either on the same day or on another day soon after. Subjects. There were 24 kindergartners with a mean age of 6 years, 0 months (range = 5 years, 8 months to 6 years, 8 months). The kindergartners' mean reading level on the WRAT-R was prefirst grade. The kindergartners were tested in late April and early May. The 24 first graders had a mean age of 6 years, 9 months (range = 6 years, 2 months to 7 years, 3 months) and were tested in January. Their reading level on the WRAT-R was mid- to end-first grade. All children in this and the subsequent experiments were native speakers of English. All attended schools that served middleclass populations.

Results For each phoneme in each nonword, we used the list of phonemes and corresponding letters in the preceding section to determine whether the appropriate letter for that phoneme appeared in the child's spelling. In "fot," "foat," and "fote" for /fot/, all phonemes were represented appropriately. In "fit," both consonants were represented in an appropriate fashion, but the vowel phoneme was not. In "fae," only the first consonant was spelled appropriately. Some errors are easily classified as substitutions (e.g., i for lol in "fit" for /fot/) or omissions (e.g., omission of Ixl in "fae" for /fot/). Other errors however (e.g., "vdau" for /vaem/) are difficult to classify in this manner. We counted a phoneme as correctly spelled regardless of the position of the corresponding letter in the child's spelling. Thus, a kindergartner was credited for correct spellings of hi and /ae/ in "isvan" for /vaem/. Had other possible spellings of phonemes (e.g., ee for /if) been taken into account, the rated accuracy of vowel spellings likely would have increased more than the rated accuracy of consonant spellings because vowels have more different spellings in English than do consonants (Hanna et al., 1966). Thus, poorer performance on vowels than consonants could be due, to some extent, to our scoring system. Our main interest, however, is the contextual factors that affect children's spelling performance. If children do more poorly on the same vowels or consonants in some positions of words or syllables than in other positions, this is not likely to be an artifact of our scoring system. Table 1 shows the mean proportion of cases in which each phoneme was represented with the appropriate letter. Not surprisingly, the first graders did better than the kindergartners. The first graders tended to perform better on initial consonants than final consonants, with poorer performance on vowels. The kindergartners did better on initial consonants than final consonants. They did almost as poorly on final consonants as on vowels. To confirm these impressions, we subjected the raw num-

Table 1 Means and Standard Deviations for Proportion of Cases in Which Phonemes Were Represented Appropriately in Experiment 1 Phoneme position

Grade First Kindergarten

Initial consonant M SD .95 .09 .71 .28

Medial vowel M .76 .45

SD .21 .23

Final consonant M

SD

.92 .51

.09 .35

bers of appropriate spellings for each phoneme to an analysis of variance with the between-subjects factor of grade (kindergartner vs. first) and the within-subject factor of phoneme position. Position was coded as initial consonant, medial vowel, or final consonant. Position in the syllable is of course confounded with the variable of consonant versus vowel for these stimuli. There was a main effect of grade, F{\, 46) = 31.81, p < .001, MSe = 29.73, a main effect of position, F(2, 92) = 30.66, p < .001, MSe = 5.15, and an interaction between these factors, F(2, 92) = 4.62, p = .012. In view of the interaction, comparisons were carried out at each grade level using a Bonferroni-based procedure, with a = .05, involving two comparisons. For first graders, performance tended to be better on initial consonants than on final consonants, although the difference did not reach the .05 level, f(23) = 2.01, p = .056, one-tailed with the Bonferroni adjustment. Also, performance was significantly worse on vowels than on final consonants, *(23) = 4.23, adjustedp < .001. The kindergartners performed reliably better on initial consonants than on final consonants and vowels, adjusted p < .001. Final consonants and vowels were statistically indistinguishable from one another. We also asked whether the sizes of the letters that children used to represent phonemes reflected various properties of the phonemes. We measured, to the nearest centimeter, the heights of the letters that were appropriately used to represent phonemes. If a child's spelling contained more than one instance of a letter corresponding to a certain phoneme (e.g., "vaam" for /vaem/), the heights of the letters were averaged. Kindergartners' letters were taller than those of first graders (1.03 cm vs. 0.80 cm). In addition, initial and final consonant letters were taller than medial vowel letters in the children's spellings (0.98 cm vs. 0.80 cm), just as consonant letters are often taller than vowel letters in lowercase conventional spelling. These impressions were confirmed in an analysis of variance with the variables of grade and position of the phoneme (initial consonant vs. medial vowel vs. final consonant). There was a main effect of grade, F(l, 46) = 18.64, p < .001, MSe = .10, and a main effect of position, F(2,92) = 73.29, p < .001, MSe = .01, but no interaction, p = .87. Finally, we examined whether the letters corresponding to appropriately spelled phonemes were printed in uppercase or lowercase. We did this by calculating the proportion of unambiguous uppercase letters relative to the total number of unambiguous uppercase and unambiguous lowercase letters. For those letters that have different shapes in uppercase and lowercase, such as Bib, a letter was considered unambigu-

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ously uppercase if its shape was uppercase, regardless of its height. A letter was considered unambiguously lowercase if its shape was lowercase, regardless of its height. For letters that do not have different shapes in uppercase and lowercase, such as O/o, a letter had to be taller than all of the unambiguously lowercase letters in the child's spelling to count as uppercase. Likewise, a letter had to be shorter than all of the unambiguously uppercase letters in the spelling to count as lowercase. Kindergartners were more likely to use uppercase letters than were first graders (.54 uppercase spellings for kindergartners vs. .15 for first graders). The proportion of uppercase spellings was highest for initial consonants (.47), intermediate for final consonants (.26), and lowest for vowels (.11). Confirming these impressions, an analysis conducted with the factors of grade and position found a main effect of grade, F(l, 46) = 49.29, p < .001, M5e = 0.14, a main effect of position, F(2, 92) = 35.39, p < .001, MSe = 0.04, and an interaction, F(2, 92) = 3.12, p = .049. The interaction arose because, although the effects of position were similar at both grade levels, the differences were larger in kindergartners.

Discussion The main question addressed in Experiment 1 was whether phonemes in certain positions of a CVC are spelled more accurately than phonemes in other positions. Such differences, which are consistent with the view that the context of a phoneme affects children's ability to spell it, were found at both the kindergartner and first-grade levels. For kindergartners, initial consonants were significantly easier to spell than final consonants. The same trend was observed for first graders. Because the consonants that appeared in the first position of these CVC nonwords were the same as those that appeared in the last position, the difference must reflect the position of the phonemes rather than their identity. Stage and Wagner (1992) likewise reported that syllable-final phonemes (which were consonants for the majority of their stimuli) were more difficult to spell than syllable-initial phonemes (which were also consonants in the majority of cases). Both first graders and kindergartners found medial vowels difficult to spell. For first graders, vowels were much more difficult than final consonants. For kindergartners, the superiority for final consonants over vowels was not statistically reliable. This interaction between position and grade level is similar to that reported by Stage and Wagner (1992). Because we did not include stimuli with vowels in positions other than medial position, we cannot be sure to what extent children's poor performance on vowels in this experiment reflects their position or their category. Most likely, both factors are important. In addition to investigating the accuracy with which consonants and vowels were spelled, we investigated characteristics of the letters that were used to spell them. Most of the observed differences were of little theoretical interest. The greater height of initial and final consonant letters as compared with medial vowel letters probably reflects differences in the heights of lowercase consonant and vowel letters in conventional print. The greater use of uppercase

print for consonants in comparison with vowels probably occurs because children's vowel letters tended to be short. For letters with the same shape in uppercase and lowercase, such as O/o, short letters were scored as lowercase. A more interesting result was that children were more likely to capitalize initial consonants than final consonants. Apparently, even kindergartners know that some words, such as their names, begin with capital letters. No words end with capital letters. Even when spelling a nonword, children sometimes use a capital letter to mark the beginning of the word. An important question that is left open by the results of Experiment 1 and the previous research concerns the source of the position effects. To what extent do differences between initial consonants and final consonants and differences between consonants and vowels reflect the positions of the phonemes in the syllable? To what extent do these differences reflect the positions of the phonemes in the word or the nonword as a whole? We must address these questions if we are to understand the causes of the context effects in children's spelling. To do so, as well as to assess the role of stress in spelling accuracy, we used bisyllabic stimuli in Experiments 2 and 3. The stimuli for Experiment 2 were CVC$CVC nonwords. One CVC syllable had primary stress; the other syllable was unstressed but had a full vowel. Experiment 3 involved consonant-vowel $ consonant-vowel (CV$CV) non words. One syllable had primary stress; the other had either an unstressed full vowel or the unstressed reduced vowel hi. Only first graders participated in Experiments 2 and 3, as bisyllabic nonwords were thought to be too difficult for kindergartners to spell.

Experiment 2 The stimuli for Experiment 2 were CVC$CVC nonwords such as /'taefnib/ and /hab'gid/. One syllable of each bisyllabic nonword was stressed; the other was unstressed but had a full vowel. Our primary interest was in the accuracy with which children represented the phonemes in the nonwords. For example, do first graders show similar levels of accuracy on the HI of /'taefnib/, that is, the final phoneme of the first syllable, and the Ibl, that is, the final phoneme of the second syllable? If the domain of the position effect is the syllable, performance should be similar on all syllable-final phonemes. If word boundaries are important, children may do better on the Ibl of /'taefnib/, the final phoneme of the stimulus, than on the HI. In addition, we asked whether letter size and letter case reflect linguistic properties of the stimuli. In particular, does the tendency to capitalize the first consonants of CVCs that was observed in Experiment 1 reflect a tendency to capitalize the first consonants of syllables or the first consonants of words?

Method Stimuli. Each child spelled 16 CVCSCVC nonwords. The stimuli used the same consonants and vowels as in Experiment 1, with the addition of /w/ (spelled as w) and /hi (spelled as h). Half of the nonwords had primary stress on the first syllable, as in /'taefnib/. The other half had primary stress on the second syllable, as in

PHONEME-GRAPHEME CORRESPONDENCES IN SPELLING /hab'gid/. In none of the nonwords was the unstressed vowel reduced to hi by English phonological rules (Fudge, 1984). The nonwords' middle consonant sequences, /fn/ and /bg/ in the examples, could not legally belong to the same syllable in English. Thus, there is a clear syllable break between the two consonants (Treiman & Zukowski, 1990). There were four lists of nonwords. One list, shown in the Appendix, included /'taefnib/ and /hab'gid/. The stress assignments were reversed in the second list, forming /taefnib/ and /'habgid/. The third and fourth lists were derived from the first and second lists by reversing the syllables of each nonword. One quarter of the children had each list. Procedure. The procedure was similar to that of Experiment 1. The only exception was that four (rather than two) children were tested at the same time. The experimenter ensured that each child could repeat each stimulus correctly and with the correct stress pattern before attempting to spell it. Subjects. Twenty-four first graders with a mean age of 6 years, 8 months (range = 6 years, 2 months to 7 years, 3 months) participated. The children were tested in December and January. The children's mean score on the WRAT-R corresponded to a mid-first grade reading level.

Results As in Experiment 1, we determined whether the appropriate letter for each phoneme appeared anywhere in the child's spelling. In "samg" for /' sepmag/, for instance, the /s/ and Id of the first syllable and the /m/ and /g/ of the second syllable were represented with s, a, m, and g, respectively. The phonemes /p/ and laJ were not represented in an appropriate fashion; indeed, they were omitted altogether. In "siknab" for /sig'naeb/, /g/ was not represented appropriately. As in Experiment 1, we did not consider the position of a letter in the child's spelling. Thus, all four consonants were scored as appropriately represented in "hlft" for/'hotlif/even though l\l was misordered relative to IV and lit. Table 2 shows the proportion of cases in which each phoneme was spelled with the appropriate letter. An analysis of variance with the within-subject factors of stress of the syllable (stressed vs. unstressed), position of the syllable in the nonword (first syllable vs. second syllable), and position of Table 2 Means and Standard Deviations for Proportion of Cases in Which Phonemes Were Represented Appropriately in Experiment 2 Phoneme position Initial consonant Stress

Medial vowel

M SD M SD First syllable of nonword Stressed .91 .11 .58 .24 .20 Unstressed/full .89 .55 .23 vowel Second syllable of nonword Stressed .83 .22 .55 .24 Unstressed/full .78 .22 .54 .27 vowel

Final consonant M

SD

.47 .46

.27 .25

.71 .65

.20 .27

471

the phoneme in the syllable (initial consonant vs. medial vowel vs. final consonant) was performed on the raw numbers of appropriate spellings. There was a main effect of the position of the phoneme in the syllable, F(2, 46) = 55.16, p < .001, MSe = 3.10. This main effect was qualified by an interaction between the position of the phoneme in the syllable and the position of the syllable in the word, F(2, 46) = 21.86, p < .001, MSe = 1.85. Given this interaction, the results for each syllable were analyzed separately with a Bonferroni-based procedure, with a = .05, involving three comparisons. In the first syllable, children performed best on the initial consonant (mean proportion correct = .90), significantly more poorly on the vowel (.57), and significantly more poorly on the final consonant (.47). In the second syllable, initial consonants were again represented most accurately (.80). However, in contrast to the results in the first syllable, performance on final consonants (.67) significantly exceeded performance on vowels (.55). Another way of looking at the interaction is that syllable-initial consonants were easier to spell when they occurred in the first syllable (and were therefore at the beginning of the nonword) than when they occurred in the second syllable (and were therefore in the middle of the nonword). Conversely, syllable-final consonants were easier to spell when in the second syllable than when in the first syllable. Performance on vowels was similar in the first and second syllables. The analysis of variance also revealed a main effect of stress, F(l, 23) = 6.82,p = .016, MSe = 0.61. Children were more likely to spell a phoneme appropriately when the phoneme occurred in a stressed syllable than when the phoneme occurred in an unstressed syllable. Although the difference was small, the mean proportion of correct spellings being .67 for phonemes in stressed syllables as compared with .64 for phonemes in unstressed syllables, the effect of stress was apparent in each position of the nonwords (see Table 2). It is important to note that the influence of stress was similar for vowels and consonants, as reflected in a lack of interaction between stress and syllable position, p = .83. None of the other main effects or interactions in the overall analysis of variance was significant, ps > .12. As in Experiment 1, we measured the heights of the letters that were appropriately used to represent various phonemes. These data were analyzed using the within-subject factors of stress of syllable, position of syllable in nonword, and position of phoneme in syllable. Data for 3 children who did not produce any correct spellings for phonemes in some of the categories were omitted from the analysis. The only significant effect was that of position in syllable, F(2, 40) = 32.21, p < .001, MSe = .016. Consonant letters were taller than vowel letters, 0.76 cm versus 0.62 cm, the same difference observed in Experiment 1. Finally, we examined whether the letters corresponding to appropriately spelled phonemes were printed in uppercase or lowercase. The proportions of unambiguous uppercase spellings relative to the total number of unambiguous uppercase and unambiguous lowercase spellings were analyzed with the variables stress of syllable, position of syllable in nonword, and position of phoneme in syllable. Data for 3 children who produced no correct spellings for phonemes in

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some categories were omitted from the analysis. The only significant effect was that for position of the phoneme in the syllable, F(2, 40) = 18.20, p < .001, MSe = .094. The proportion of uppercase spellings was significantly higher for the initial consonant of a syllable (.32) than for the final consonant (.28). The proportion of unambiguous uppercase spellings was significantly lower for vowels (.04).

Discussion The results of Experiment 2 confirm that the position of a phoneme in a stimulus affects children's ability to spell it. Moreover, the results clarify the source of the position effects that were observed in Experiment 1 and in previous studies. In Experiment 1 and in Stage and Wagner's (1992) study, first graders tended to perform best on the initial phonemes of syllables, next best on the final phonemes, and poorest on the medial phonemes. The results of Experiment 2 show that the typical first-grade serial position curve for monosyllables is not seen in each of the syllables of bisyllables. The typical position effect did appear in the second syllable of a bisyllabic nonword, with best performance on the initial consonant, next best performance on the final consonant, and worst performance on the vowel. In the first syllable, however, the first graders performed significantly worse on the final consonant than on the medial vowel. This was a pattern not shown by either first graders or kindergartners with the monosyllables of Experiment 1. The observed differences between CVC monosyllables and the individual syllables of CVC$CVC bisyllables show that the position of a phoneme in the syllable is not the only determinant of spelling performance. The position of the phoneme in the nonword as a whole is important too. Children's performance on the first syllables of bisyllabic nonwords reflects the finding that phonemes in the middles of stimuli, such as the Ibl of /nib'taef/, are difficult to spell. Comparable syllable-final phonemes at the edges of stimuli, such as the Ibl of /'taefnib/, are easier to spell. Further evidence of an effect of word edges on spelling accuracy is that syllable-initial consonants appeared to be spelled more accurately when at the beginning of a nonword, as with the /n/ of /nib'taef/, than when in the middle of a nonword, as with the Inl of /'taefnib/. Thus, when the position of a phoneme in its syllable is held constant, phonemes at either edge of a stimulus are easier to spell than phonemes in the middle of a stimulus. In addition to the effects of word structure on spelling accuracy, there are also effects of syllable structure. Supporting this view was a sizable difference in spelling accuracy, 33%, between syllable-initial consonants and syllablefinal consonants when both consonants were in the middle of a nonword. The If I of/'taefnib/ was more difficult to spell than the In/. Thus, syllable-final consonants are more difficult to spell than syllable-initial consonants. The effects of word structure and syllable structure on children's correct spellings of phonemes mesh with the findings of Treiman (1993a) on one particular type of spelling error, omissions. In that study, phonemes at the beginnings and ends of words were less susceptible to omission than

phonemes in the middles of words. Also, syllable-initial consonants were less often omitted than syllable-final consonants. The convergence between the two studies, one study involving experimental methods with nonwords and the other study involving regression methods with real words, gives us confidence in the reliability of the observations. The sources of the word structure and syllable structure effects are considered further in the General Discussion. Turning to the effects of stress on spelling accuracy, we found that phonemes in unstressed syllables with full vowels were less likely to be correct than phonemes in primarystressed syllables. The difference was small, only 3%, but statistically significant. It is important to note that the effect of stress was present in all three positions of the CVC syllables. Treiman (1993a) reported similar findings for omission errors. In that study, phonemes in stressed syllables were less likely to be omitted than phonemes in unstressed syllables. This held true both for vowels and consonants. Therefore, with regard to its effects on children's spelling, stress seems to be a property of the syllable as a whole. Finally, it is of interest to compare the performance of the first graders in Experiments 1 and 2. The two groups of children were of similar ages and reading levels and were tested at about the same time during the school year. The first graders in Experiment 2 probably performed more poorly because they were asked to spell bisyllabic stimuli, in contrast to the monosyllabic stimuli of Experiment 1. Using a more sensitive within-subject design, Treiman (1993b) likewise found poorer performance on a given syllable (e.g., /zor/) when it occurred in a bisyllabic nonword (e.g., /'zorwek/) than when it occurred alone. These experimental results, together with results from the naturalistic study (Treiman, 1993a), show that the length of a word or nonword is another determinant of spelling accuracy. Children perform more poorly on a given phoneme when it occurs in a long word than when it occurs in a short word. The findings of Experiment 2 with regard to letter height and letter case are considered in the General Discussion.

Experiment 3 The results of Experiment 2 suggest that children's ability to spell a phoneme is affected by the position of the phoneme in its syllable, the position of the phoneme in the stimulus as a whole, and the stress of the syllable. These conclusions were reached from a study involving CVC$CVC stimuli. To confirm and extend these findings, Experiment 3 examined children's spelling of CV$CV stimuli. In the stressed/ unstressed condition, one syllable of each nonword had primary stress. The other syllable was unstressed but contained a full vowel. Examples are /'baiso/ and /ge'hi/. In the stressed/reduced condition, one syllable had primary stress and the other syllable had an unstressed reduced vowel. Examples are /'baisa/ and /ga'hiA As in Experiment 2, we asked how spelling accuracy varies with the position of the phoneme in the syllable, the position of the syllable in the nonword, and the stress of the syllable. We also asked whether these factors affect letter height and letter case.

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PHONEME-GRAPHEME CORRESPONDENCES IN SPELLING

Method Stimuli. The stimuli were CV$CV nonwords. In the stressed/ unstressed condition, each child spelled 16 nonwords. For half of the nonwords, the first syllable had primary stress. The second syllable was not stressed but contained a full vowel. For the other nonwords, the stress assignments were reversed. The consonants were the stops /p/, /b/, and /g/ and the fricatives /f/, hi, /s/, and IhJ. The vowels were Id, l\l, /ai/, and lol. Stops and fricatives are classified as obstruent consonants; we used obstruent consonants and long vowels because the syllable boundary between the vowel and the following consonant is clearest in this case (Treiman & Danis, 1988). There were four lists of words in the stressed/unstressed condition. One list, shown in the Appendix, contained /'baiso/ and /ge'hi/. In the second list the stress pattern was changed, forming /bai'so/ and /'gehi/. The third and fourth lists were derived from the first and second lists by reversing the order of the syllables in each nonword. One quarter of the children spelled each list. In the stressed/reduced condition, each child spelled 16 nonwords. Half of the nonwords contained a stressed first syllable and a reduced second syllable, as in /'baisa/. The other half contained a reduced first syllable and a stressed second syllable, as in /ga'hi/. There were four lists of stimuli in the stressed/reduced condition. They were formed by changing the unstressed vowels of the stimuli in the stressed/unstressed condition to hi. One quarter of the children were given each list. Procedure. The procedure was similar to that of Experiment 1. Each child participated in the stressed/unstressed condition and the stressed/reduced condition on different days, 2 or 3 days apart. The order of the two conditions was counterbalanced across subjects. Subjects. There were 32 first graders with a mean age of 6 years, 11 months (range = 6 years, 5 months to 7 years, 10 months). The children were tested in March. Their mean score on the WRAT-R corresponded to a reading grade level of mid-first grade.

Results For consonants and vowels in stressed and unstressed syllables and consonants in reduced syllables, children's spellings were scored as appropriate or inappropriate following the procedure of Experiment 1. We used the lists of phonemeletter correspondences presented earlier to determine whether the child's spelling contained an appropriate representation of the phoneme in any position. For example, all four phonemes are represented in "visay" for/'vaise/. "Haye" for /ha'ge/ contains an appropriate letter for /h/ and Id but none for /g/. The results are shown in Table 3. The scoring system just described could not be used for reduced vowels because any vowel letter is a possible representation of hi. For example, /a/ is spelled as a in the second syllable of canvas, e in the second syllable of elephant, i in the second syllable of animal, o in the first syllable of cocoon, and u in the second syllable of ukulele. If a child's spelling contained a vowel letter in some position, as almost all did, the letter might be considered a representation of the reduced vowel. We did score omissions of reduced vowels; these results are discussed later. We first examined the effects of the position of the phoneme in the syllable and the position of the syllable in the word on the accuracy with which various phonemes were represented. This analysis, performed on the raw numbers of appropriate spellings, was restricted to the stressed/

Table 3 Means and Standard Deviations for Proportion of Cases in Which Phonemes Were Represented Appropriately in Experiment 3 Phoneme position Initial consonant Condition/stress

M

SD

Final vowel M

SD

First syllable of ' nonword Stressed/unstressed Stressed Unstressed/full vowel Stressed/reduced Stressed Reduced

.93 .95

.11 .11

.80 .75

.23 .31

.96 .93

.07 .12

.79 —

.26 —

Second syllable .17. In the analysis just reported of the effects of phoneme position, syllable position, and stress, the variable of stress had no significant effects. However, because data from the stressed/reduced condition were not included in the analyses, it would be premature to conclude that stress was unimportant. A better way to assess the effects of stress is to compare, with t tests, (a) performance on consonants and vowels in unstressed syllables in the stressed/unstressed condition and consonants in reduced syllables in the stress/reduced con-

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dition with (b) performance on consonants and vowels in stressed syllables in the stressed/unstressed condition and consonants in stressed syllables in the stressed/reduced condition. Mean accuracy was .85 for unstressed phonemes and .88 for stressed phonemes, f(31) = 1.64,p = .055, one-tailed. Thus, there was a trend for phonemes in unstressed syllables to be more difficult to spell than phonemes in stressed syllables, but the difference did not reach statistical significance. The results were also nonsignificant when consonants where analyzed alone. We also looked at vowel omissions. Any spelling that contained a consonant letter (or a double consonant such as nn) followed by another consonant letter (or doublet) followed by a vowel letter or group of vowel letters was scored as an omission of the first vowel. Thus, "vpie" for /fa'pai/ was an omission of the reduced vowel of the first syllable. Spellings that contained a consonant letter (or doublet) followed by a vowel letter or group of vowel letters followed by another consonant letter (or doublet) were scored as an omission of the second vowel. For example, "fos" for/fosai/ was an omission of the unstressed vowel of the second syllable. In these analyses, w and y were counted as vowel letters. The results are shown in Table 4. The vowel omission data were subjected to an analysis of variance with the variables of position of the syllable in the nonword (first vs. second), stress (stressed vs. unstressed) and condition (stressed/unstressed vs. stressed/reduced). There were main effects of stress, F( 1,31) = 23.01, p < .001, MSe = 1.32, and condition, F(l, 31) = 15.74, p < .001, MSe = 1.43, and an interaction between these factors, F( 1, 31) = 10.42, p < .005, M5 e = 1.01. No other main effects or interactions were significant, ps > .30. Children omitted unstressed vowels significantly more often than stressed vowels in the stress/reduced condition, t(3l) = 5.09, p < .001, onetailed. The difference was smaller in the stressed/unstressed condition, f(31) = 1.72, p = .048, one-tailed. These results suggest that unstressed vowels are particularly susceptible to omission when they are reduced. Secondary issues involve letter height and letter case. We analyzed the data on letter height in the stressed/unstressed condition using the factors of position of the phoneme in the syllable, position of the syllable in the nonword, and stress. The data of 3 children who produced no correct spellings of Table 4 Means and Standard Deviations for Proportion of Cases in Which Vowel Phonemes Were Omitted in Experiment 3 Phoneme position First vowel of stimulus

Second vowel of stimulus

M

SD

M

SD

Stressed/unstressed Stressed Unstressed/full vowel

.06 .09

.13 .20

.03 .08

.08 .15

Stressed/reduced Stressed Reduced

.06 .19

.10 .24

.08 .23

.17 .28

Condition/stress

phonemes in certain categories were omitted from this analysis. There were significant main effects for the position of the phoneme in the syllable, F(l, 28) = 138.67, p < .001, MSe = .012, and the position of the syllable in the nonword, F(l, 28) = 42.18, p < .001, MSe = .003, as well as an interaction between these factors F(l, 28) = 22.19,p < .001. As in earlier experiments, consonant letters were taller than vowel letters, 0.80 cm. versus 0.62 cm. The difference between consonants and vowels was particularly pronounced in the first syllable, with consonants at the beginnings of nonwords being the tallest of all. When the effects of stress on letter height were examined with a t test, as in the analysis of the effects of stress on spelling accuracy, no significant effect was obtained, p = .69. In similar analyses we examined the proportion of uppercase letters in relation to the total of unambiguous uppercase spellings and unambiguous lowercase spellings. In the stressed/unstressed condition, the position of the phoneme in the syllable had a significant effect, F(l, 28) = 68.92, p < .001, MSe = 0.11, as did the position of the syllable in the nonword, F(l, 28) = 24.35, p < .001, M5 e = 0.02. Consonant letters were more likely to be capitalized than were vowel letters, .53 versus .15. Also, the proportion of uppercase spellings was higher for phonemes in the first syllable of a nonword (.41) than for phonemes in the second syllable of a nonword (.31). Data from 3 children who produced no correct spellings of phonemes in certain categories were omitted from this analysis. There was no effect of stress in an overall analysis, p > .20.

Discussion In English, vowels tend to be harder to spell than consonants. This difference is documented in previous work (Jorm, 1977; Stage & Wagner, 1992; Treiman, 1993a), as well as in Experiment 1. According to the intrinsic difficulty hypothesis, the superiority for consonants over vowels reflects intrinsic properties of the phonemes or of their spellings. According to the context hypothesis, the observed differences reflect the contexts in which the two types of phonemes tend to occur in words. Consonants often occur at the beginnings and ends of English words, with vowels in the middles. With the CVC stimuli of Experiment 1, we cannot distinguish between the intrinsic difficulty hypothesis and the context hypothesis because the vowels in this experiment always occurred in the middles of the stimuli. The results of Experiment 3 indicate that the superiority for consonants over vowels is not immutable. It reflects, at least in part, the positions in which these phonemes tend to occur in English words. In the first syllable of a CV$CV, in which the consonant has the benefit of being the first phoneme in the stimulus, accuracy on the consonant was 16% higher than accuracy on the vowel. In the second syllable of a CV$CV, the vowel now has the word-edge benefit. Here, accuracy on the consonant was just 5% higher than accuracy on the vowel. Although the superiority for consonants over vowels was not eliminated when the vowel was at the end of the stimulus, it was substantially reduced. This finding supports the context hypothesis, specifically the idea that the position of a

PHONEME-GRAPHEME CORRESPONDENCES IN SPELLING phoneme in a word affects spelling accuracy. Phonemes at the edges of words are easier to spell than phonemes in the middles of words. Our findings on consonant/vowel differences agree with those of Stage and Wagner (1992), who statistically equated consonants and vowels for position. Without position held constant, performance on consonants exceeded performance on vowels by a large margin. When position was held constant, the size of the difference was reduced by more than half. The results of Experiment 3 and of Stage and Wagner (1992) indicate that some of the differences in spelling accuracy between English consonants and vowels stem from the different contexts in which these phonemes occur in English words. However, not all of the differences are due to context. Even when vowels are in a favorable position, they appear to be more difficult to spell than consonants. Thus, the findings are consistent with a weak form of the context hypothesis, according to which differences in spelling accuracy between English consonants and vowels are partly due to the contexts in which these phonemes occur in words. However, context does not completely explain the observed differences. Another factor is that English vowels typically have more alternative spellings than do consonants. Treiman (1993a) showed that this is an important cause of differences in spelling accuracy for children learning to spell in English. With regard to stress, there was a trend for spelling to be more accurate on phonemes in primary-stressed syllables than on phonemes in unstressed (full or reduced) syllables. The size of this difference, 3%, was the same as in Experiment 2, but the trend was not significant in the present experiment. However, vowel omissions were significantly more common in unstressed syllables than in stressed syllables. Reduced vowels were especially likely to be omitted. Using regression methods, Treiman (1993a) also found that vowel omissions were more frequent in unstressed syllables than in stressed syllables. No distinction was made between unstressed full vowels and unstressed reduced vowels in that study. General Discussion Two hypotheses about children's spelling motivated the present research. The intrinsic difficulty hypothesis states that some phoneme-grapheme correspondences are more difficult for children to learn and use than others. Whenever a "difficult" correspondence occurs in a nonword, children are likely to misspell it. The context hypothesis states that the linguistic context in which a phoneme occurs is important. A difficult correspondence is more or less difficult depending on the position in which it occurs and whether the phoneme is stressed or unstressed. The context hypothesis has two forms. The strong form states that context is the only important factor; phoneme-grapheme correspondences are not easy or difficult in themselves. The weaker and more plausible form states that context and intrinsic differences among phoneme-grapheme correspondences are both influential. Our results support the weak form of the context hypothesis.

475

Although some correspondences are intrinsically harder than others, the context in which a correspondence occurs also plays an important role in children's ability to use it. One contextual factor that affects children's ability to use phoneme-grapheme correspondences is the position of a phoneme in the word or nonword. Phonemes at the beginning or the end of a stimulus are easier to spell than phonemes in the middle of a stimulus. Such edge effects were seen in Experiments 2 and 3. In Experiment 2, syllable-initial consonants were easier to spell when they were at the beginning of a nonword (e.g., the /n/ of/'nibtaef/) than when they were at the beginning of a syllable within a nonword (e.g., the Ixl of/'nibtaef/). Likewise, syllable-final consonants were easier to spell when they occurred at the end of a nonword (e.g., the HI of /'nibtaef/) than when they occurred at the end of a syllable within a nonword (e.g., the /b/ of/'nibtaef/). Similar results were obtained in Experiment 3. In that experiment, syllable-initial consonants were easier to spell at the beginning of a nonword (e.g., the hi of/'vaise/) than in the middle of a nonword (e.g., the /s/ of /'vaise/). Syllable-final vowels were easier to spell at the end of a nonword (e.g., the Id of /'vaise/) than in the middle of a nonword (e.g., the /ai/ of /'vaise/). When the category of the phoneme (consonant or vowel) and the position of the phoneme in the syllable are held constant, phonemes at the edges of nonwords are spelled more accurately than phonemes in the middles of nonwords. The position of a phoneme in its syllable also affects spelling accuracy. In Experiment 1, syllable-initial single consonants (e.g., the IxJ of /tof/) tended to be easier to spell than syllable-final single consonants (e.g., the HI of /tof/) when both consonants were at the edges of nonwords. In Experiment 2, syllable-initial consonants (e.g., the IxJ of /'nibtaef/) were easier to spell than syllable-final consonants (e.g., the Ibl of/'nibtaef/) when both consonants were in the middles of nonwords. Thus, children spell singleton consonants at the beginning of a syllable more accurately than singleton consonants at the end of a syllable. Our results agree with those of previous studies of children and adults showing that errors are more common in the middles of words and nonwords than at the beginnings or ends (Jensen, 1962; Kooi et al., 1965; Mendenhall, 1930; Stage & Wagner, 1992). Although those studies do not permit us to distinguish between the position of the phoneme in the word and the position of the phoneme in the syllable, the present findings show that both are important. In documenting effects of both word position and syllable position on spelling accuracy, our results with nonwords corroborate the findings of Treiman (1993a) with real words. That study showed, with regression methods, that first graders are more likely to omit phonemes in the middles of words than phonemes at the beginnings and ends of words. Similarly, Treiman (1993a) found that children are more likely to omit consonants at the ends of syllables than consonants at the beginnings of syllables. How are the effects of word position and syllable position on spelling accuracy to be interpreted? To spell a nonword, children must analyze the nonword by dividing it into phonemes and must represent each phoneme with a grapheme.

476


They cannot rely on a memorized whole-word spelling. Position effects may reflect children's phonological analysis abilities, in particular their ability to access various phonemes in nonwords. Phonemes at the beginning or the end of a nonword, because they must be separated from only one other adjacent phoneme, may be easier to access than phonemes in the middle of a nonword. A singleton consonant at the end of a syllable may be somewhat difficult to access because it forms a phonological unit with the preceding vowel, the rime. A singleton consonant at the beginning of a syllable may be easier to extract from the syllable because it forms a unit on its own, the onset of the syllable. Thus, differences between syllable-initial and syllable-final consonants may reflect children's ability to segment spoken syllables into phonemes. A fuller discussion of the effects of syllable structure on children's ability to segment syllables into phonemes was presented by Treiman (1992). The effects of position on spelling accuracy may also reflect the characteristics of short-term memory. To spell a nonword, children must remember the identity and the order of the phonemes. Items at the beginning of a sequence are easier to remember than items in the middle of a sequence, the primacy effect. Items at the end of a sequence are easier to remember than items in the middle, the recency effect. Children may analyze and spell a bisyllabic stimulus as a whole, in which case the serial position curve should appear across the stimulus as a whole. Alternatively, children may work on one syllable at a time, in which case each syllable should show its own primacy and recency effects. Although this memory account may explain some of the position effect in spelling, it is hard to see how it could explain the large difference in accuracy (33% in Experiment 2) between syllable-final medial consonants and syllable-initial medial consonants in nonwords such as /'nibtaef/. If children analyze and spell a bisyllabic stimulus as a whole, they should show similar levels of accuracy on the two medial consonants. This was not observed. If children analyze and spell one syllable at a time, each syllable should show a serial position curve with its own primacy and recency effects. However, no recency effect appeared in the first syllable of a nonword such as /'nibtaef/; performance on the final consonant of this syllable was significantly worse than performance on the middle vowel. A complete understanding of position effects may require consideration of linguistic factors that affect children's ability to analyze spoken syllables into phonemes in addition to short term memory. Stress also has some influence on children's ability to spell phonemes. Significant effects of stress emerged in Experiment 2, in terms of accuracy in spelling of consonant and vowel phonemes, and in Experiment 3, in terms of vowel omissions. The results of Experiment 3 showed the same trend for accuracy in the spelling of consonants and vowels evident in Experiment 2, although the trend was not significant in Experiment 3. Thus, there is clear evidence that vowels in unstressed syllables are difficult to spell. There is some evidence, although it is not consistent, that consonants in unstressed syllables also cause difficulty. Likewise, Treiman (1993a) found, using regression methods, that both vowels and consonants in unstressed syllables were susceptible to

omission. Thus, although questions remain in the case of consonants, it appears that stress is a suprasegmental property that affects whole syllables. In spelling, children are more likely to err on phonemes in unstressed syllables than on phonemes in stressed syllables. A secondary goal of the present studies was to determine whether various characteristics of the letters that children use to spell phonemes—in particular, letter height and letter case—reflect the properties of the phonemes. Most of the differences that we found are predictable from elementary features of standard orthography and so are not particularly interesting. However, an intriguing suggestion to emerge from our analyses is that capitalization might serve as an index of children's syllabification of spoken stimuli. This suggestion stems from the finding in Experiment 2 that children were more likely to capitalize syllable-initial consonants than syllable-final consonants. The results of these studies, in which children were asked to spell isolated nonwords in an experimental situation, largely agree with the results of Treiman's (1993a) study, in which children wrote connected text in a classroom setting. This convergence is important, as it suggests that similar processes were used to spell real words and nonwords in the two studies. It alleviates the concern that, in asking children to spell made-up words, we are tapping processes that are very different from those that occur during real writing. Whether children are spelling real words or nonwords, their performance on phoneme-grapheme correspondences varies with such factors as the position of the phoneme in the word and syllable and the stress of the syllable. Educators often assume that once children learn correspondences between isolated phonemes and graphemes, they will be able to use these correspondences to spell new words. In many kindergarten and first-grade classrooms, therefore, a good deal of time is devoted to learning links between m and Ival, a and /ae/, and so forth. Our results suggest that, although knowledge of isolated phoneme-grapheme correspondences may be one element of being a good speller, it is by no means the only one. Children's ability to spell a given phoneme may vary markedly with the position of the phoneme in the word and syllable and with the stress pattern of the word. For example, a kindergartner or first grader may be able to spell the m of mad but unable to spell the m of ham. This child probably does not need additional drill on the correspondence between Ival and m. What the child needs, instead, is phonological analysis instruction. Specifically, the child needs help in analyzing the unit /aem/ into /ae/ and Ival. Once the child can segment the rime unit, he or she should be able to spell it correctly. As another example, the child who misspells the Ixl of after may know the correspondence between Ixl and t perfectly well when this correspondence is presented in isolation or at the beginnings of words. The child has trouble spelling the IxJ of after because the phoneme is in the middle of the word and because it is in an unstressed syllable. The role of context in children's use of phonemegrapheme correspondences means that it is not sufficient to teach correspondences in isolation. Children must practice using phoneme-grapheme correspondences in various positions of both short words and long words and in both stressed

PHONEME-GRAPHEME CORRESPONDENCES IN SPELLING

and unstressed syllables. Only with such varied practice will children become good spellers. As discussed in the introductory paragraphs, conclusions similar to those we found for spelling appear to hold for reading. Children's ability to use grapheme-phoneme correspondences varies with the position of the grapheme in the word or syllable. Therefore, in general, teaching of isolated letter-sound relationships is not sufficient to make children good readers and good spellers. Children need practice in analyzing the sound forms of words and in applying spellingsound mappings in a variety of words. References Fowler, C. A., Liberman, I. Y., & Shankweiler, D. (1977). On interpreting the error pattern in beginning reading. Language and Speech, 20, 162-173. Fudge, E. (1984). English word-stress. Winchester, MA: Allen & Unwin. Hanna, P. R., Hanna, J. S., Hodges, R. E., & Rudorf, E. H. (1966). Phoneme-grapheme correspondences as cues to spelling improvement. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office. Jastak, S., & Wilkinson, G. (1984). The Wide Range Achievement Test-Revised. Wilmington, DE: Jastak. Jensen, A. R. (1962). Spelling errors and the serial-position effect. Journal of Educational Psychology, 53, 105-109. Jorm, A. F. (1977). Children's spelling processes revealed by transitional error probabilities. Australian Journal of Psychology, 29, 125-130. Kooi, B. Y., Schultz, R. E., & Baker, R. L. (1965). Spelling errors and the serial-position effect. Journal ofEducational Psychology, 56, 334-336. Kreiner, D. S., & Gough, P. B. (1990). Two ideas about spelling: Rules and word-specific memory. Journal of Memory and Language, 29, 103-118.

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Ladefoged, P. (1982). A course in phonetics (2nd ed.). San Diego, CA: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. Mendenhall, J. E. (1930). The characteristics of spelling errors. Journal of Educational Psychology, 21, 648-656. Read, C. (1975). Children's categorization of speech sounds in English (Research Rep. No. 17). Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English. Shankweiler, D., & Liberman, I. Y. (1972). Misreading: A search for causes. In J. F. Kavanagh & I. G. Mattingly (Eds.), Language by ear and by eye: The relationships between speech and reading (pp. 293-317). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Stage, S. A., & Wagner, R. K. (1992). The development of young children's phonological and orthographic knowledge as revealed by their spellings. Developmental Psychology, 28, 287-296. Treiman, R. (1991). Children's spelling errors on syllable-initial consonant clusters. Journal of Educational Psychology, 83, 346360. Treiman, R. (1992). The role of intrasyllabic units in learning to read and spell. In P. B. Gough, L. C. Ehri, & R. Treiman (Eds.), Reading acquisition (pp. 65-106). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Treiman, R. (1993a). Beginning to spell: A study of first-grade children. New York: Oxford University Press. Treiman, R. (1993b). Use ofcontsonant letter names in beginning spelling. Manuscript submitted for publication. Treiman, R., & Baron, J. (1981). Segmental analysis ability: Development and relation to reading ability. In G. E. MacKinnon & T. G. Waller (Eds.), Reading research: Advances in theory and practice (Vol. 3, pp. 159-198). San Diego, CA: Academic Press. Treiman, R., & Danis, C. (1988). Syllabification of intervocalic consonants. Journal of Memory and Language, 27, 87-104. Treiman, R., Weatherston, S., & Berch, D. (in press). The role of letter names in children's learning of phoneme-grapheme relations. Applied Psycholinguistics. Treiman, R., & Zukowski, A. (1990). Toward an understanding of English syllabification. Journal of Memory and Language, 29, 66-85.

Appendix Stimuli for Experiments List 1 for Experiment 1 /fot/, /peb/, /dev/, /nig/, /lam/, /faes/, /pib/, /gait/, naib/, /lov/, /sed/, /vaem/, /dep/, /san/, /mir/, /gair/. List 1 for Experiment 2 /'taefnib/, /'gipnet/, /'fetlap/, /'bainwof/, /'magtev/, /'pavlit/, /'naebsig/, /'revnaim/, /hab'gid/, /gom'baef/, /faep'hin/, /mag'sep/, /vait'gaeb/, /wes'fab/, /miiv'tag/, /lif hot/. List 1 for Stressed/Unstressed Condition of Experiment 3 /'baiso/, /'bogi/, /'baifo/, /'fipai/, /'vaise/, /'hegi/, /'pogi/, /'fibai/,

/ge'hi/, /vo'ge/, /hi've/, /sai'fo/, /pe'hi/, /fai'pe/, /hai'bo/, /so've/. Key to Notation lol as in so, lei as in say, Id as in set, IV as in seat, Id as in sob, /as/ as in sat, III as in sit, /ai/ as in sigh, /a/ as in sofa, /n/ as in sing, ld$l as in ./ay; ' indicates that following syllable receives primary stress (stress is only indicated for stimuli that contain more than one syllable), $ indicates a syllable boundary.

Received July 30, 1992 Revision received March 3, 1993 Accepted March 3, 1993

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