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Reading and spelling development in Brazilian Portuguese ,~NGELA MARIA VIEIRA PINHEIRO Department of Psychology, Federal University of Minas Gerais, UFMG, Brazil

ABSTRACT: This paper describes the development of reading and spelling procedures in Portuguese speaking children from 1st to 4th grade and discusses whether the developmental models of Frith, Seymour and Stuart & Coltheart may account for this development. This study is based on reaction time and error measurements of the reading and spelling of isolated words and pseudowords. The words varied in frequency, length and spelling-to-sound-regularity and the non-words varied only in length and spelling-to-sound regularity. The results indicated that the children tested did not pass through a logographic stage and that their reading and spelling initially involved a non-lexical process which from the beginning was influenced by a developing lexical process (that became progressively more important as development progressed), suggesting the use of overlapping processes. This finding contradicts Frith's strictly sequential theory but not Seymour's model, which allows for concurrent development of processes. Despite the fact that the present data do not fit into the definition of Seymour's orthographic stage, there were indications of a shift from the alphabetic to the orthographic stage and also that the process of lexicalization occurs more rapidly in reading than in spelling. Another finding was that the dual-process reading/spelling model, developed in English, can be extended to Portuguese. KEY WORDS: Alphabetic-orthographic transition, Orthography, Reading/spelling relationships

INTRODUCTION G i v e n the large a m o u n t o f research that has been d o n e on w o r d and nonword reading and spelling by English-speaking children, any detailed investigations of these patterns o f p e r f o r m a n c e in children learning other languages is of interest. There are a n u m b e r o f theoretically important questions about the role o f orthography in learning to read, and Portuguese is a language which has received little attention. The aim o f the present study was to describe acquisitional trends in a fouryear span o f the procedures used to read and spell words and n o n - w o r d s by Portuguese speaking children and to verify the extent to w h i c h the developmental models o f Frith (1985), S e y m o u r & M a c G r e g o r (1984) and Stuart & Coltheart (1988) m a y a c c o u n t for reading and spelling d e v e l o p m e n t in Portuguese. C o n s e q u e n t l y , the questions w h i c h this research asks were: (1) whether Portuguese o r t h o g r a p h y allows a distinction between lexical and non-lexical processes o f the kind postulated b y the dual-process m o d e l o f reading in English; (2) w h e t h e r reading and spelling d e v e l o p in a s e q u e n c e o f Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal 7:111-138, 1995. © 1995 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

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stages; and (3) what is the relationship between reading and spelling in Portuguese. Many of the theories developed to explain reading of alphabetic script assume that deriving sound and meaning from script can take place through a direct visual coding - lexical route - or through an indirect phonological recoding - non-lexical route: Morton's dual-process (or dual-route) model of reading (Morton 1969; revised 1979). According to this theory, the type of process used in fluent reading depends on the linguistic characteristics of the written stimuli. High-frequency words, having their orthographic, semantic and phonological representations stored in the lexicon, are identified through direct visual access (lexical route). Low-frequency words and non-words which, by definition, have no lexical entries are identified through the use of letter-sound correspondence rules. The reliance on rules for converting graphemes into phonemes presents difficulties for the reading of exception words whose pronunciation, by violating such rules, would be assembled incorrectly. Thus, the correct pronunciation of exception words must be achieved by the lexical process. Regular words can be pronounced by either the lexical or non-lexical procedure. In 1980, Morton proposed an expanded version of his previous model to account for spelling. The two routes used in reading have their correspondents in spelling. The spelling of a word could, therefore, be obtained lexically (addressed spelling) or non-lexically (phonetically mediated or assembled spelling). This means that as in reading, the variables of frequency, regularity and lexicality are important means of allowing one to gain information about how phonological and lexical strategies are manifested in writing. As far as 'regularity' is concerned, Portuguese seems to present fewer grapheme-phoneme irregularities than English. While the spelling of many English words does not convey their pronunciation clearly and unambiguously, in Portuguese only the words having the grapheme x in an intervocalic context (where x can be realised as [s, z, ks, ~]), and some pairs of homographs containing the vowels e and o in the stressed syllables have implications for reading. It follows that Portuguese orthography, unlike English orthography, does not present many different categories of regularity of spelling-to-sound correspondence. For instance, in Portuguese there are no words that share the same spelling pattern but with different pronunciation, as is found in English - the ambiguous words - such as fear and bear. There are neither exception words such as have nor strange words such as ache. In terms of print-to-sound correspondence Portuguese orthography is more regular than English. In fact, reading in Portuguese, except in the cases mentioned above, involves the learning of rules and does not require memorization of the pronunciation of individual words. However, in spelling, in many cases, the representation of sounds is not explained by rules. For example, before e and i either j or g can arbitrarily occur (gente, jeito) and, as a result, the learner

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will have to memorize the words spelled with g and the ones spelled with j in this context. Like English, some words are regular with respect to reading but they are tess regular in spelling because they have more than one legitimate graphic representation. The extreme case in Portuguese is the phoneme/s/which can be represented in spelling by nine forms: s, z, c, f, x, ss, sc, s f and xc. In reading these nine orthographic symbols are invariably pronounced as/s/. In general, in fluent reading, irregularities of this kind do not present much difficulty since the pronunciation of words containing such correspondences can be predicted from GPC rules. However, at the initial stages of the reading process, when the child has not yet learned the full range of letter-sound correspondences, the words having one-to-many phoneme-grapheme mapping may not be as easily recognized as the words having one-to-one mapping. This possibility, coupled with the finding that only a limited set of exception words can be identified in Portuguese, leads one to expect that, in this language, the manipulation of spelling-to-sound regularity, in reading has limitations as a test of the dual-route model. This examination seems to be a test of the acquisition of GPC rules by young readers. This is not the case for spelling. Reading acquisition and development

Recent theories of reading development differ in regard to proposals of a development taking place in a sequence of stages (Marsh, Friedman, Welch & Desberg 1981; Frith 1985; Seymour & MacGregor 1984) and proposals that highlight the role of phonological awareness in this process, with no commitment to any specific previous stages (e.g. Stuart & Coltheart 1988). The stage theories have in common the view that reading progresses from a pre-phonological phase (visual cue reading) to a phase in which the child begins to acquire knowledge of the alphabetic principle, and finally to a stage in which a sophisticated model of orthography is internalized. These hypothesized stages, however, vary in detail and number in each theory. They also vary in terms of sequentiality in development. For example, while Frith's theory implies strictly sequential stages, Seymour's model admits that the logographic and alphabetic processes can develop concurrently depending on the teaching approach. Another difference between Frith and Seymour's theories is in regarding the orthographic stage. While for Frith this is the result of merging of earlier strategies, Seymour sees it as an expansion of the capabilities of the alphabetic system. Stuart & Coltheart (1988) explain reading development in terms of the role played by phonological awareness and knowledge. These authors demonstrated that the phonological capability of pre-schoolers in conjunction with their letter-sound knowledge can be a significant predictor of the child's later reading skills.

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Portuguese research There is growing awareness of the importance of the ability to perform speech analysis in early reading in Portuguese. For example, A. Morais (1986), adopting similar techniques of visual and phonological interference on reading used by Kimura & Bryant (1983), in a series of studies (including a longitudinal study) investigated the strategies used by groups of children (from preschool to 3rd grade) during the acquisition and development of the reading and spelling skills in Portuguese. This was in contradiction to the findings of Kimura and Bryant that the young English readers tend to use the visual strategy in reading, Morais showed that the Brazilian children, mainly the pre-school ones, tended to use the phonological strategy. The reading of these children was not affected by visual interference but it was affected by phonological interference with the words read/spelled more slowly under conditions of phonological interference. The difference in results of the research with English and Brazilian children could be the result of two main factors: (1) the different nature of the two languages, and (2) different methods of reading instruction to which the English and Brazilian subjects were exposed. In regard to the nature of the two languages, it is possible that the characteristics of the Portuguese orthography have had an influence on the Brazilian results since Portuguese seems to present fewer grapheme-phoneme irregularities than those of English. While in English the frequent irregularities of spelling might encourage the use of the visual strategy in word recognition, in Portuguese the relative regularity of spelling could, on the other hand, encourage the use of a phonological strategy. However, to attribute the use of the visual strategy by young English readers to the nature of the English script does not seem to be reasonable since results similar to the Brazilian ones have also been documented in English. For example, Gibson & Levin (1975) showed that young readers had their reading comprehension disturbed while having to perform a task that reduced the possibility of phonological analysis of the stimuli being read. In addition, there is a growing number of studies in the international literature that establish a link between phonological awareness in pre-readers and future success in reading/writing acquisition. Stuart & Coltheart (1988) provided additional evidence for this view and further concluded that only children who lack phonological skills and knowledge about phonemic segmentation and letter-sound correspondences will be logographic readers. This assertion coincides with A. Morais's (1986) conclusion about logographic readers. Turning to the question of instructional methods, there is evidence suggesting that different methods favour different strategies initially adopted in reading. For example, Seymour (1989) stresses that the timing of the emergence of the non-lexical (or alphabetic) reading is optional and dependent on teaching approaches. Testing children under different teaching approaches, Seymour documented the initiation of the alphabetic processing following a


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logographic phase (under a teaching policy that emphasized the acquisition of sight vocabulary) or taking place concurrently with the logographic processing (under a mixed teaching regime). So far the Brazilian research seems to present some evidence of the use of the phonological strategy at the initial stages of reading and spelling development. Morals' study also attempted to investigate the emergence of the visual strategy in this development. Due to limitations in experimental design (such as the limited number of words used, the simplicity of their orthographic pattern and the lack of control over frequency of usage) reliable conclusions could not be drawn about the timing of the emergence of the visual strategy among his subjects, nor was it possible to measure consistently the rate of decline of errors between grades. The present study compared the reading/spelling performances of children in different stages of development. Using a methodology similar to that employed by Seymour & MacGregor (1984), it is the first study in Portuguese to address the question of the development of reading and spelling directly by manipulating psycholinguistic variables such as frequency, spelling-tosound regularity, lexicality and length by measuring reaction times and error rates for different stimulus types as well as comparing reading and spelling. It was expected that this study would provide information about the strategies employed at each age level and about the growth of the lexical and nonlexical processes. For example, a logographic strategy (which is based on storage of specific words) would be marked by an inability to read or write non-words. A purely alphabetic strategy (relying on simple graphemephoneme and phoneme-grapheme relationships) would result in difficulties with irregular words, and the marks of the use of an orthographic strategy (the development of fully specified lexical representations of vocabulary) would be pointed by a shift from exclusive reliance on the alphabetic strategy to the use of lexicat reading and spelling characteristics of competent performance.

METHOD

Sample. The sample consisted of a group of normally developing children from the same private school - Col6gio Pit~goras - in the state of Minas Gerais, Brazil, a school well-known for its homogeneous high middle-class socio-economic composition. The children were drawn from the 1st to the 4th grades of the primary sector and the members of each individual grade (20 children per grade) came mostly from the same classroom. The criterion of selection of the sample was the judgement of the reading and spelling ability of these subjects by their classroom teacher in agreement with the pedagogic supervisor of each grade. Only the good readers/good spellers were selected. The selection procedure used was the only one possible, since in Brazil there are no standardized tests of reading/spelling achievement. The method of reading instruction at Col6gio Pitfigoras has been the same

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for a number of years. Children (5-6 years) are taught by means of a phonics method and in the first grade, having a good knowledge of the letter-sound correspondence and some reading skills, they are introduced to a method which emphasizes the formation of a 'sight (visual) vocabulary'. The details of the mean age and age range of the m e m b e r s of each grade, sex as well as their intelligence levels determined by individually administered standard scales of non-verbal intelligence - R a v e n ' s Progressive Matrices - appear in Table 1. Table 1. Mean chronological age and chronological range, sex, and the distribution of the members of each individual grade within the Raven's Progressive Matrices scores for the members of grades 1-4 Sex

Raven scores (Percentile)

Grade

Mean age

(Age range)

M/F

50

75

90

95

1st 2nd 3rd 4th

7.6 8.3 9.7 10.8

(7:2-8:11) (7:8-9.3) (9:4-10:5) (9:0-11:5)

10/10 7/13 9/11 8/12

1 2 4

2 2 9 4

1 2 4 6

16 16 5 6

Procedure. The children were asked to read, on different occasions, the items of a list of 96 words varying in frequency of occurrence, length and regularity, along with the reading of a list of 96 non-words which were constructed to have the same structure and length as the words used in the word lists. Both the word and non-word lists were arbitrarily divided into two lists. The final result was two lists - word 1 and word 2 - and two non-word lists - nonword 1 and non-word 2 - each c o m p o s e d of 48 items. These lists (see Appendix 1) were the same for the four grades and the same for both reading and spelling tasks. The children p e r f o r m e d the reading task first and after one week they were asked to spell the stimuli they had read. The word lists were based on an analysis of spelling-sound relationships in Portuguese orthography, which generated three categories of words: regular, rule-based and irregular and also on an investigation of the frequency of occurrence of words in primary reading books, which led to a classification of words into high frequency category and low frequency category (Pinheiro & K e y s 1987).

PROPOSED CLASSIFICATION OF ITEMS INTO CATEGORIES OF REGULARITY Classification o f words Since the regularity of words has different implications for reading and spelling and since these implications are mostly relevant for spelling, this


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classification took into account the phoneme-grapheme irregularities of Brazilian Portuguese which might cause problems in spelling. As a result, many words classified as irregular or rule-based may only be irregular or rulebased from the point of view of spelling and may only cause problems in reading at initial stages of development when the child has not yet learned the letter-sound contextual conditionings nor fully grasped the irregular correspondences.

Regular words. The words containing the following were regarded as regular: (1) letters presenting one-to-one mapping on to orthography; that is, the letters which always represent the same sound or sounds which are always transcribed by the same letters; (2) letters and sounds in their most common context; that is, letters receiving their normal phonetic value (e.g. t at the start of a syllable) and the sounds represented by their first letter (e.g. [k] represented by e before a o u) and (3) letters which represent a sound in most contexts regardless of ambiguous representation of the sound concerned in specific contexts. For example, this is the case of the representation o f / s / before e and i at the beginning of a word and the representation o f / z / a l s o before e and i. While at the beginning of w o r d s , / s / c a n be spelled with s before all vowels (e.g. saIa, selva, siiabas, sola and suave), and before e and i , / s / c a n also be spelled with the grapheme c (e.g. cidade, cedo and cimento). In the same fashion, while/3/is spelled with a j in most contexts (e.g. janela, sujeira, jeito, jipe, joga and juventude, and before e and i,/3/ can also be spelled with the grapheme g. In short, the words containing the most frequent representation o f / s / a n d /3/, in the context mentioned, were considered regular and the ones containing specific representation of these sounds were considered irregular. Rule-based words. Under this category were the words having letter-sound correspondences which can be explained by rule. In the cases of the letter representing identical sounds in identical contexts - one-to-many mapping a criterion of frequency of occurrence in the graphic context under consideration was used. For example, by rule, the grapheme s between vowels is realised a s / z / (e.g. mesa/'mezaJ), so it follows that in order to have /s/ between vowels, it must be represented by the digraph ss (e.g. russo/'ruso/). However, in intervocalic position, b o t h / z / a n d / s / c a n be represented by other letters: intervocalic /z/ being represented by z and x, and intervocalic /s/ being represented by f, sf and c. Since the letter s between vowels occurs more frequently in the language to represent the sound/z/, s in this context was considered rule-based and the other representation o f / L / i n this context was considered irregular. While the digraph ss can be used before all vowels, the alternative representation of the sound in this context - f, s 9 and c can only be used before certain vowels: 9 and sf can only appear before a o and u, and c can only appear before e and i. Thus, the words having ss between vowels were considered rule-based and the words having f, sf, or c between

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vowels were considered irregular. The only exception in regard to the use of ss to represent/s/was in the case where ss was attached to the suffix ~/o forming ssao. In this position ssao competes for position with 9~o. Since f~/o is a very frequent suffix in the language, words having this suffix were considered rule-based and the ones having ss + ~o were considered irregular. Irregular words. The instances in which the correspondence is said to depend

on lexical identity or arbitrary factors produce correspondences which cannot be accounted for by any rule in the orthographic system. The words containing this type of correspondence were therefore classified as irregular words. For example, the/J7 before a vowel can be spelled with either ch or x. Strictly speaking, words such as chuva and xuxu are both irregular since each of them could potentially be spelled either with ch or x. Only those who have memorized the spelling of each word containing either ch or x are able to write them correctly. However, while the x is a complex letter which represents many different phonemes, the ch always represents the/J'/. For this reason, the words containing this digraph were considered regular and the words spelled with x representing/J'/were considered irregular.1 A difference between the three categories of regularity, mainly between the regular and irregular words, would be expected in early reading. The words containing, for example, f, sc, c and x to r e p r e s e n t / s / - especially the less frequent ones - may be recognized less rapidly than the ones spelled with s (the regular correspondence of/s/) as a result of little experience with such correspondences. It is also possible that beginners show, in reading, a difference between regular and rule-based items: words can be mispronounced as a result of lack of knowledge of contextual rules. For example, the intervocalic s that is realised a s / z / c a n be read as/s/ and not as/z/ (e.g. usam read as 'ussam'). Another non-appliance of a rule that can generate mispronunciations can be caused by the reading of the nasal diphthong/awn/: in a stressed syllable it is spelled as 6o (except in the words in which an accentuation mark indicates otherwise) and in a non-stressed syllable it is spelled as am. Potential errors would be the reading of f a c t o / f a ' k a w n / a s 'facan' /'fakawn/ and usam /'uzawrd as 'usao' /u'zawn/. These errors would be expected to occur in the low frequency items. In spelling, a difference between the three categories of item regularity for words is expected in all grades and in both levels of word frequency. Classification and scoring procedure f o r non-words

The non-words stimuli have retained the regular, rule-based, and irregular correspondences of the equivalent word stimuli respectively. In reading, the pronunciation of a non-word was considered correct when it maintained the following: (1) a permissible letter-sound correspondence in a determined context (foxe read either as/'f%fe/, as/'fokse/, or as/'foze/); (2) a rule-based correspondence (e.g. dasa read a s / ' d a z a / a n d not as 'dasa' - s in a inter-


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vocalic context is realized as/z/); (3) the stress pattern predictable by the Portuguese orthography (e.g. puas read as/'puas/and not as/pu'as/), and (4) the vowel quality as indicated by the diacritics (e.g. dald read as 'dat6' and not as 'dale'). In spelling, a non-word containing one-to-many phoneme-grapheme correspondence can be spelled in many different ways and a response was considered correct provided that the phoneme with multiple representation was spelled with one of the graphemes accepted in the particular context (e.g. Iefo /'leso/spelled as 'lesso', 'lesqo', 'lexo', etc. but not as 'leso'/'lezo/). Thus, all the legal orthographic patterns, in a given context, compatible with the non-word pronunciation were accepted as correct responses. In the above example, all responses of lefo are phonetic spellings but 'leso', is a regularization error:/s/was spelled with s, the regular representation of/s/, regardless of contextual conditioning. Since any response compatible with the application of the GPC rules is considered correct, a regularity effect is not expected in reading. However, in spelling, the examination of different levels of regularity of non-words may generate an effect in all grades. Regular non-words should be better spelled than both rule-based and irregular ones. The rule-based words may produce very predictable errors of misapplication of contextual rules which will give indications of the rate and order of the acquisition of these rules. The nonwords containing irregular correspondences may not be so problematic since any phonetically correct spelling will be considered as correct. However, it is possible that this type of non-word would produce a number of regularizations and that a non significant difference between the spelling of these stimuli and the rule-based ones are found.

Error classification Although the original error classification consisted of assessing a rather complex range of errors types to both words and non-words only the percentage to the following will to be reported: (1) refusal responses; (2) nonword responses; and (3) errors of regularization.

Apparatus. The reading task was administered using an Apple II microcomputer. Stimuli were presented in lower case characters at the centre of an 18" CRT. Reaction time (RT) was measured by a lapel-mounted microphone attached to the collar of the subject's shirt and connected to a voice-switch device which was linked to the computer through the games I/O channel. An Apple Mountain hardware clock was used to control inter-stimulus intervals and to measure RT to the nearest millisecond. Experimental procedure. In the reading task, subjects were tested in two sessions. In the first session an explanation of how to perform the tasks was given to each subject and this was followed by the presentation of three series

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of practice trials. The first practice trial consisted of a game formed by a set of non-alphabetic items which was introduced in order to acquaint the subjects with the computer and with the use of the voice key. Further practice trials consisted of a series of 10 words and a series of l0 non-words. Subjects were told that words and non-words (depending on the set) would appear on the screen which they should try to read as soon as they could. The subjects were also told that they probably would be presented with words or non-words that they could not read and that in these cases it would be quite satisfactory if they simply said 'I don't know'. The practice session usually lasted for about 20 minutes. After the practice session the experimental lists were introduced. The subjects were first asked to read the items of one of the word lists and then after an interval of about 10 minutes (during this time the experimenter printed out the list read and talked informally with the subject) they were asked to read the items of one of the non-word lists. Thus, on each occasion, subjects were presented with either word 1 and nword 2 or word 2 and nword 1. On a second occasion, which often took place on the following day, subjects were presented with the pair of lists not previously presented. The items of the experimental lists were randomized by the computer prior to testing. There were three randomized sets of sequence which determined the order in which the words and non-words were presented. The sequence varied between experiments. In the dictation task, while the members of the first grade were asked to write from dictation the item of one list of stimuli in each individual session (four altogether), the members of the second, third and fourth grades were given both a word list and a non-word list in each session (two sessions altogether) as in the reading task. The experimental lists were dictated to groups of children of each grade mostly by the experimenter and only occasionally by the classroom teacher. Results The results consisted of correct vocal reaction time (RT) obtained from the reading of word and non-word items separately in the reading task and percentages of error responses for word and non-word in both the reading and spelling task. Ss' mean RT and mean error rates were compared by analysis of variance with repeated measures with the within-factor being frequency, regularity, length and lexicality and the between factor being children's progress. Both subject and item analyses2 of variance were performed. The former analyses will be referred to as SA, and the latter one as IA. Error analysis also controlled frequency and regularity but did not consider the effect of length. 3

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READING TASK

Word reading T h e m e a n RT a n d m e a n e r r o r for w o r d r e a d i n g is s h o w n in Table 2, T h e r e w a s a s i g n i f i c a n t effect of grade o n RTs: S A ( 3 , 7 9 ) = 35.12, p < 0.001; I A ( 3 , 9 5 ) -- 577.34, p < 0.001 a n d on e r r o r rates: S A ( 3 , 7 9 ) = 6.93, p < 0 . 0 0 t ; I A ( 3 , 9 5 ) = 15.75, p < 0.001.

Table 2. Mean correct RT in ms. and mean error rate (%) for word reading for grades 1-4 Grade

RT

Error

ist 2nd 3rd 4th

1965 1380 951 831

7.37 5.11 6.20 2.15

T h e frequency effect o n RTs a n d o n e r r o r rates was s i g n i f i c a n t (p < .001) in all g r a d e s , in b o t h s u b j e c t a n d i t e m a n a l y s i s . H F w o r d s w e r e r e a d f a s t e r a n d m o r e a c c u r a t e l y than L F w o r d s (Table 3 s h o w s the m e a n l a t e n c i e s a n d m e a n e r r o r rates for H F a n d L F w o r d r e a d i n g ) . Grade a n d frequency intera c t e d for b o t h RT - S A ( 3 , 7 9 ) = 1 9 . 0 7 , p < 0.001; I A ( 3 , 9 5 ) = 1 4 . 6 8 , p < 0 . 0 0 I - and e r r o r - S A ( 3 , 7 9 ) = 6.57, p < 0.001; I A ( 3 , 9 5 ) = 5.33, p < 0.001.

Table 3. Mean correct RT in ms. and mean error rate (%) for high and low frequency word reading for grades 1--4 High frequency

Low frequency

Grade

RT

Error

RT

Error

1st 2nd 3rd 4th

1746 1214 880 796

2.86 1.46 3.33 0.85

2183 1545 1022 866

11.88 8.75 9.07 3.45

A d e c r e a s e in the d i f f e r e n c e in r e a d i n g t i m e a n d a c c u r a c y rates b e t w e e n h i g h a n d l o w f r e q u e n c y w o r d s w a s o b s e r v e d as the g r a d e s p r o g r e s s e d . H o w e v e r , this w a s not a c o n s t a n t d e c r e a s e a c r o s s all f o u r g r a d e s . In r e g a r d to r e a d i n g t i m e , a s i g n i f i c a n t d e c r e a s e in t h e s i z e o f t h e f r e q u e n c y e f f e c t (pointed by interactions between grade and frequency) was apparent from the 2nd to the 4th g r a d e s as f o l l o w s : 2nd a n d 3rd g r a d e : S A ( 1 , 3 9 ) -- 10.63, p < 0.01; I A ( 1 . 9 5 ) = 34.09, p < 0.001; 3rd and 4th grades: S A ( 1 , 3 9 ) = 8.10,

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p < 0.01; tA(1,95) = 7.32, p < 0.01. As development advances, more and more unfamiliar vocabulary becomes familiar. In the error results, although there was a tendency for the size o f the frequency effect to diminish between consecutive grades, this difference was only significant for the later grades: 3rd and 4th grades: SA(1,39) = 5.02, p < 0.05; IA(1,95) = 7.32, p < 0.01. The lexicalization process for accuracy takes longer than for processing time. Table 4 presents both the mean RT and mean error for HF and LF words of the three categories of regularity for grades 1-4. Frequency and regularity only interacted in the subject analysis. While the early grades obtained significant (p < 0.001) interactions in both reading time and error rates, this interaction was limited to reading time (p < 0.001) for the third graders and to error rates for the fourth graders (p < 0.01). These results suggest that the regularity effect found in the subject analysis is due to some items only. Taking the errors, for instance, in each category of regularity a few items stood out. While some items generated word responses (e.g. cabras and porque read as ' c o b r a s ' and as 'parque' respectively), others were regularizations (e.g. boxe and 6rgao).

Table4. (a) Mean correct RT in ms. and (b) mean error rate (%) for levels of frequency subdivided into categories of regularity [R (regular), RL (rule-based) and I (irregular)] for word reading for grades 1-4 Low frequency words

High frequency words Grade

R

RL

I

R

RL

I

a) Mean correct RT 1st 1712 2nd 1220 3rd 878 4th 797

1732 1203 878 799

1795 1219 883 792

1991 1420 979 858

2157 1516 t000 869

2401 1699 1088 869

b) Mean error rate (%) 1st 1.27 2nd 0.94 3rd 2.65 4th 0.63

3.79 2.19 4.75 1.27

3.52 1.25 2.60 0.65

5.08 3.75 8.13 0.94

10.88 8.44 8.99 3.79

19.67 14,06 10.14 5.63

The analysis of regularity by frequency by grade only showed significant results in the subject analysis for reading time: SA(6,79) -- 2.77, p < 0.5; IA(6,95) -- 0.925 and for error rates: SA(6,79) -- 2.95, p < 0.01; IA(6,95) = 1.45. A follow-up analysis per grade in which high and low frequency items of the three categories of regularity were separately compared revealed that the categories of regularity only presented a significant effect among the LF words


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and this effect was restricted to reading time. This finding was confirmed in the item-analyses for the 1st and 2nd grades, but not for the third grade as follows: 1st grade: SA(2,38) = 11.812,p < 0.001; IA(2,47) = 5 . 3 4 7 , p < 0.01; 2nd grade: SA(2,38) -- 21.073, p < 0.001; IA(2,47) = 5.t84, p < 0.01; 3rd grade: SA(2,38) --14.274, p < 0.001; IA(2,47) = 3.095. Thus, GPC irregularity (mainly the categories regular versus irregular) does appear to have an influence on LF word reading. However, this influence seems to be restricted to the beginning of reading acquisition and development. In addition, the influence of spelling irregularity on LF words found in the RT analysis did not extend to error rates. Contrary to expectation, no significant difference between the regular and rule-based categories occurred in the errors of the young readers. There was a significant (p < 0.001) length effect with the reading time of the subjects of each grade affected by the number of letters contained in the words (Table 5). Grade and length interacted: SA(9,79) = 16.11, p < 0.001; IA(9,95) = 11.22, p < 0.001, which suggests that the size of the length effect varied in the different grades. It was larger in the early grades.

Table 5. Mean correct RT in ms. for the reading of high and low frequency words varying in length (4-7 letters) for grades 1-4 High frequency words

Low frequency words

No. of letters

No. of letters

Grade

4

5

6

7

4

5

6

7

1st 2nd 3rd 4th

1371 1066 828 754

1490 1174 819 754

1730 1214 873 779

2421 1403 1011 896

1934 1345 985 842

2129 1477 934 818

2264 1584 1079 866

2332 1727 1104 934

Nonword reading The mean RT and the mean error for non-word reading is presented in Table 6. There was a significant effect of grade on RTs: SA(3,79) = 22.944, p < 0.001; IA(3,95) -- 713.830, p < 0.001 and on error rates: SA(3,79) = 7.694, p < 0.001; IA(3,95) = 17.745, p < 0.001. The regularity effect for both reading time and errors (Table 7) was only significant in the subject analysis. These results indicate that the effect of GPC regularity is not generalizable over the population of items and that it m a y have been attributable to only some of the items tested. For each individual grade, non-word reading was related to length and showed a significant (p < 0.001) length effect (Table 8). Grade and length interacted: SA(9,79) -- 6.269, p < 0.001, IA(9,95) -- 4.127, p < 0.001, which

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Table 6. Mean correct RT in ms. and mean error rate (%) for non-word reading for grades 1-4 Grade

RT

Error

1st 2nd 3rd 4th

2640 2083 1372 1193

22.13 t5.99 17.73 11.54

Table 7. Mean correct RT in ms. and mean error rate (%) for the reading of the 3 categories of regularity of non-words for grades 1-4 Regular

Rule-based

Irregular

Grade

RT

Error

RT

Error

RT

Error

1st 2ud 3rd 4th

2554 1975 1326 1149

17.71 10.83 13.64 10.08

2636 2060 1364 1183

23.54 17.89 17.19 13.09

2731 2215 1425 1248

25.13 19.24 22.35 11.44

Table 8. Mean correct RT in ms. for the reading of non-words varying in length (4-7 letters) for the members of grades 1-4 Number of letters Grade

4

5

6

7

1st 2nd 3rd 4th

2212 1774 1163 1026

2555 2030 1371 1168

2762 2128 1394 1219

3051 2428 1563 1385

s u g g e s t s that the l e n g t h effect v a r i e d in the d i f f e r e n t grades. I f a f f e c t e d the r e a d i n g o f the y o u n g e r s u b j e c t s m o r e than that o f the o l d e r ones.

Word and nonword reading T h e r e was a clear lexicality effect: b o t h H F and L F w o r d s w e r e r e a d signific a n t l y (p < 0.001) f a s t e r and s i g n i f i c a n t l y m o r e a c c u r a t e l y (p < 0.001) than n o n - w o r d s in all g r a d e s . A g e n e r a l l y p o s i t i v e r e l a t i o n s h i p w a s f o u n d b e t w e e n b o t h RT a n d e r r o r rates for w o r d s a n d n o n - w o r d s . A l l c o r r e l a t i o n s b e t w e e n H F w o r d and n o n - w o r d , a n d b e t w e e n L F w o r d a n d n o n - w o r d w e r e s i g n i f i cant, b o t h for RT and e r r o r rate, e x c e p t in o n e c a s e (the 4th g r a d e ) , in w h i c h there was n o t a s i g n i f i c a n t c o r r e l a t i o n b e t w e e n errors in the two tasks. T h e i n t e r a c t i o n length by lexicality b y g r a d e s h o w e d that the l e n g t h effect for n o n - w o r d s was s i g n i f i c a n t l y g r e a t e r than the effect for H F w o r d s b u t o n l y


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for the members of the more advanced grades: SA(3,57) = 7.49, p < 0.001; IA(3,143) = 2.95, p < 0.05 and SA(3,57) = 13.48,p < 0.001; IA(3,143) -- 4.28, p < 0.01 for the 3rd and 4th grades respectively. The same pattern of results was found for comparisons between LF words and non-words: SA(3,57) -12.60, p < 0.001; IA(3,143) -- 3.76, p < 0.05 and SA(3,57) = 18.94, p < 0.001; IA(3,143) = 5.82, p < 0.01 for the 3rd and 4th grades respectively. The early grades also produced significant results in these two comparisons but these were restricted to the subject analysis. The general trend in word and non-word comparisons with length seems to be that distinctions in RT between word and non-word reading is accomplished in the final stages of reading acquisition. At the initial stages of reading in Portuguese, words do not always have an advantage over non-words in terms of reading time. In summary, both word and non-word reading improved in terms of speed and accuracy in function of age and academic experience which suggests the development of automaticity in the procedures used to read words and nonwords. Age and schooling also led to a decrease of the frequency, regularity and length effect which indicates a gradual development of lexical procedures to read words. As the lexical representation for increasing vocabulary develops, the children begin to rely less heavily on spelling-sound correspondence and as a result the regularity effect on LF items, exhibited by the young children, tended to disappear in older children. As expected, nonword reading was not generally affected by regularity but it was sensitive to the number of letters in the stimuli read. The finding that this length effect showed a tendency to diminish in higher grades is suggestive of a gain of automatism in the decoding procedures used. Overall, words were read faster and more accurately than non-words. However, the length by texicality by grade analyses revealed that beginning readers manifested no differences between reading time for HF words and non-words and between LF words and non-words. These subjects identified the two types of written stimuli by the use of spelling-sound correspondence. Error classification Due to the generally low error indices obtained by the subjects of this study, in the analyses to be reported, the two levels of word frequency were pooled. Refusal response: In both tasks these responses were given by first grade pupils and represented 0.70% and 0.76% of the total number of errors, for words and non-words respectively. Nonword responses to both words and non-words: the percentages of word responses to words (35.3, 41.8, 43.5 and 42.7 for grades 1-4) and to nonwords (8.3, 9.8, 16.8 and 11.8 for grades 1-4) show a preponderance of nonword responses to both word and non-word items. ReguIarization errors: (1) Word reading: the percentage of these errors for words were 31.1, 40.4, 28.6 and 40.0 for grades 1-4. In reading, regular-

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ization errors for words consisted of pronouncing an irregular correspondence with a more frequent correspondence in that specific context (e.g. boxe /'bokse/read as 'boche'/'bole/). In fact, boxe was one of the words which was most regularized. The multiple representation of the grapheme x in Portuguese seems to be one of the very few irregularities of the language that matters in reading. Words having irregular correspondence do not present much difficulty in reading since their pronunciation from spelling is unambiguous. Another irregular LF word much regularized was 6rgdo. This word as well as b~nf~o and 6rf~o, are exceptions of the rule that states that the nasal diphthong/awn/spelled as ~o appears in the stressed syllable. As a result, 6rgao was read in most cases as/~r'gawn/and not as/'~rgawn/ (the accentuation mark in the first syllable was ignored and the item mispronounced). The misapplication of some context dependent rules can also generate regularizations: casa/'caza/read as 'cassa'/'casa/. In this case the contextual rule that states that s in an intervocalic context is realized a s / z / was ignored and the regular pronunciation of the grapheme s was given. (2) Non-word reading: For the non-words the proportion of regularization was the following: 60.0, 25.1,27.2 and 25.2, from 1st to 4th grades. Examples of regularizations were as follows: dasa, esam and foisas read as 'dassa', 'essam' and 'foissas' respectively. The same explanation given above for the intervocalic s applies here. Other regularizations consisted of transforming an irregular spelling pattern into a regular one. For example, otserfe (which has a phoneme with no graphic representation 'o-ti-ser-fe') was read as 'oterfe', 'ostrefa' or 'ostefe'. As 6rg~o, 6rp~o (which derived form 6rg~o) was read in most cases without stressing the first syllable. Another example of regularization consisted in reading danae as 'danai', 'dan~o', °danam' (the nasal diphthong - ~e - was either omitted, or simplified as/awn/). In summary, word and non-word presented similar patterns of errors. Indications of the use of non-lexical process in word reading were given by (1) preponderance of non-word response (2) negligible proportions of refusal responses and (3) the considerably high percentages of regularization errors.

SPELLINGTASK The experimental data consisted of percentage of error responses given to sets of dictated words and non-words, which were previously read in the reading task. Regardless of the type of error and the number of errors made per item, only one error was marked for that item (in the qualitative analyses the unit of analyses was not the word as a whole, but the grapheme, and then more than one error could be counted in one and the same stimulus). Neither mistaken employment nor absence of accentuation marks were considered errors: there is agreement amongst teachers that the full mastery of the


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accentuation system in Portuguese comes late in the process of spelling acquisition.

Word spelling The mean error rates (in percentage) for word spelling were: 22.65, t5.65, 10.52 and 3.38 for grades 1-4 respectively. There was a significant grade effect: SA(3,79) = 97.325, p < 0.001; IA(3,95) -- 25.050, p < 0.001 and a significant (p < 0.001)frequency effect (both by subjects and items) with HF words producing more errors than L F words in all grades (Table 9 shows the mean error rates for HF and LF word spelling). Grade and frequency interacted: SA(3,79) = 30.210, p < 0.001, IA(3,95) = 7.530, p < 0.001. However, the analyses carried out between consecutive pairs of grades showed that grade and frequency interactions were only significant between the 2nd and 3rd grades: SA(1,39) -- 24.88, p < 0.001, IA(1,95) = 9.743, p < 0.001. These results indicate that at initial stages, spelling is more sensitive to frequency, showing a predominance of errors in LF words. As spelling becomes lexicalised there is a decrease in errors for LF words as evidenced by the smaller frequency effect exhibited by 3rd and 4th graders. The absence of a significant decrease in the size of this effect between the 3rd and 4th grades might indicate that the process of lexicalisation for spelling is either in development or has reached a plateau (ceiling effect).

Table 9. Mean error rate (%) for high and low frequency word spelling for grades 1-4 Grade

High frequency

Low frequency

Ist 2nd 3rd 4th

11.98 5.10 6.56 1.77

33.32 26.20 14.47 4.98

In each individual grade, there was a significant regularity effect with irregular words (IW) producing more errors than rule-based words (RLW) and these producing more errors than regular words (RW). Grade and regularity interacted: SA(6,79) -- 20.892, p < 0.001; IA(6,95) -- 5.775, p < 0.001 which indicates that the size of the regularity effect varied in the different grades. The analysis of each grade separately achieved significant (p < 0.001) interaction between frequency and categories of regularity in both subject and item analyses in the 1st and 2nd grades only. This interaction suggests that in early development the size of the regularity effect for spelling depends on the level of frequency of words. This effect was more pronounced for LF words. The mean error rates for the three categories of regularity of each level of frequency is presented in Table 10.

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Table 10. Mean error rate (%) in spelling, for levels of word frequency sub-divided into categories of regularity [R (regular), RL (rule-based) and I (irregular)] for the members of grades 1-4 High frequency words

Low frequency words

Grade

R

RL

I

R

RL

I

1st 2nd 3rd 4th

3.44 2.19 1.88 0.31

10.00 3.44 3.44 0.94

22.50 9.69 14.38 4.06

7.00 8.67 3.67 3.33

30.31 24.06 11.56 2.19

62.64 45.88 28.23 9.41

There was a significant (p < 0.001) regularity effect among both HF and LF words for all grades. These results were confirmed by the item-analyses for all grades but the 4th grade (whose members did not show a regularity effect among the LF word set). Among the HF word set the regularity effect (over subjects and items) was restricted to the spelling of HR vs HI words in all grades. The regularity effect for LF word, on the other hand, was significant (over subjects and items) for all comparisons for all grades (except the 4th grade). LR words were spelled significantly more accurately than L R L words and these significantly more accurately than LI words. The finding that the 4th grade subjects display a regularity effect for HF words, but not for LF words is very surprising. This unexpected result might be explained by the fact that high frequency irregular words generated, among the 4th graders, the highest proportion of word responses. For example, the items amanhd, cedo and mamde were spelled by some children as 'manha', 'cebo' and 'mambo' - all word responses. Therefore, taking into account the explanation for the deviation from the general trend, these results, apart from giving support for the categories of regularity proposed, also suggest that, in spelling, both HF and LF words are generally affected by regularity. In early grades this effect is greater for LF words. As the children gain more experience with vocabulary their spelling of LF words become less affected by regularity which explains the fact that frequency and regularity did not interact in later grades. The finding that spelling irregularity did not affect the spelling of LF words (and possibly the spelling of HF words) of the 4th grade subjects suggests that the process of lexicalisation for spelling is in development.

Nonword spelling The mean error rates (in percentage) for non-word spelling were: 20.48, 17.60, 14.89 and 7.83 for grades 1-4 respectively which generated a significant effect of grade: SA(3,79) -- 53.573, p < 0.001; IA(3,95) = 34.325, p < 0.001). The regularity effect was also significant (p < 0.001) in all groups. From


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Table 11 it can be seen that regular non-words were spelled significantly more accurately than both rule-based and irregular non-words. The size o f this regularity effect did not seem to differ for the different grades: no significant results were found for grade and regularity interactions.

Table 11. Mean error rate (%) for the spelling of the 3 categories of regularity of non-words for the members of grades 1-4 Grade

Regular

Rule-based

Irregular

1st 2nd 3rd 4th

11.60 7.58 8.22 3.71

25.00 22.19 17.97 8.28

24.85 23.03 18.49 11.51

Word and nonword spelling The comparison between word and non-word spelling showed a lexicality effect among HF words in all grades. HF words were spelled significantly more accurately than non-words: from early stages of spelling development familiar stimuli seem to have an advantage over unfamiliar ones. However, this was not the case for the comparisons between LF words and non-words. In fact, L F words were spelled significantly less accurately than non-words by the members of the 1st and 2nd grades. While the 3rd graders did not show significant results in either analyses testing this comparison, the 4th grade showed a significant result but it was restricted to the subject analysis. A higher frequency o f errors in words than in non-words is often taken as a sign of non-lexical spelling, since spelling words (especially less frequent IW) can be more difficult than spelling non-words. While words have a preestablished orthographic form, the same is not true for non-words. In order to spell non-words correctly, all that is required from the subject is the ability to represent the sounds contained in these stimuli. Thus, the finding that subjects in the initial grades made more errors in LF word spelling than in non-word spelling and that the subjects o f later grades spelled these words as accurately as non-words suggests that the members of grades 1-2 were at a different stage of the acquisition of lexical spelling than the members of grades 3-4. The younger children appeared to be at the initial stage o f this process in which spelling seems to be non-lexical and the older children seemed to be moving to an intermediate stage in which the spelling of words is equal (in terms of proportions of errors made) to the spelling of non-words. The next and perhaps final stage in this development would be the exhibition of significantly fewer errors in LF words in comparison with non-words. Then one would be faced with convincing evidence of lexical spelling extending over the whole vocabulary.

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All correlations between words and non-words were significant, except for the 2nd grade. This result is indicative of a balanced mastery between the processes involved in the spelling of familiar and non-familiar stimuli. Thus, spelling performance for both words and non-words improved in function of age and academic experience. The subjects of each individual grade spelled the HF words more accurately than the LF ones. However, the frequency effect only decreased between the 2nd and 3rd grades. The lexicalisation process seems to develop less rapidly for spelling than for reading. The regularity of spelling, found in all grades, affected the spelling of both high and low frequency words and non-words. Young spellers, however, exhibited a more marked regularity effect on LF words. This result suggests that it might only be at initial stages of spelling acquisition that frequency and regularity interact. In later grades, because the children are developing lexicalised representation of low frequency words, the regularity effect becomes the same for these two levels of word frequency. The regularity effect among non-words indicates that the spelling patterns that are irregular to words can also be irregular to non-words. In addition, the finding that the regularity effect did not diminish in late grades offers evidence that non-words, as hypothesized by the dual-route model, are spelled non-lexically. In other words this effect disappeared as the children began to develop a direct visual route to meaning. In general the error rate for HF and LF word spelling correlated with that of non-word spelling. HF words were spelled more accurately than non-words by the members of all grades. LF words, on the other hand, were spelled less accurately than non-words by the members of the 1st and 2nd grades. However, the remaining grades did not spell the LF words more poorly than non-words which points to the beginning of a lexical influence on less familiar vocabulary. Error classification Refusal responses: No refusal responses were given either to words or to non-words. Nonword responses to both words and non-words: The proportions of word responses to word (4.3, 10.4, 8.2 and 14.3 for grades 1-4) and to non-words (4.1, 4.2, 2.8 and 5.3 for grades 1-4) show that there was a preponderance of non-word responses to both word and non-word items. The error responses to these stimuli differed in that more illegal spellings occurred with non-words. While the proportion of illegal spellings was negligible in response to words, this proportion in non-words was very small. Thus, even the young children know the legal orthographic patterns in Portuguese. Regularization errors: The percentages of regularization errors in response to words were 65.7, 53.5, 43.0 and 46.2 for grades 1-4.


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The misapplication of some context-dependent rules can generate regularizations. For example, in Portuguese, in the pre- and post-tonic positions, the vocalic quality of e and o is almost always conditioned by the phonological context. In these non-stressed positions (principally in the post-tonic position) /e/ is realised as [i] and /o/ as [u]. These vocalic neutralizations are not registered in spelling. As a result, a common error of regularization among these subjects was either deletion or representation of the non-stressed e as 'i', and, to a lesser extent, the representation of o as 'u'. Other regularizations that reflected the non-acknowledgement of a rule consisted of the spelling o f / z / f o r / s / b e t w e e n vowels. Thus, p e l t , tufa, afude, descida and receita were spelled as 'peso', 'ousa', 'asude', 'decida' and 'reseita'. Examples of regularizations involving irregular sound-to-print correspondences consisted of the following: (1) representation of the grapheme s or the digraph ss for the many graphemes representing/s/. Thus, 'sedo' for cedo, 'felis' forfeliz, 'testo' for texto, 'estenso' for extenso, 'pesso' for p e l t and 'assude' for afude; (2) representation of the grapheme z for s between vowels or vice versa as in °fasendo' for fazendo and 'luses' for luzes; (3) omission of silent h: 'oje' or 'oge' for hoje and 'igiene' or 'ijiene' for higiene; (4) representation of the vowel i or e in observe and admirar: 'obiserve' and 'adimira' and (4) confusion in the representation of post-vocalic/w/in words such as barril, catmo, alto and gostou spelled as 'barriu' 'caumo' and 'auto'. Thus, unlike the reading task in which the regularization errors were mainly the result of responses given to the words boxe and 6rgdo, in the spelling task most of the irregular words, and a few rule-based words, presented a level of difficulty, especially for the subjects of the initial grades. The percentages of regularization errors in response to non-words were 34.7, 38.7, 31.7 and 17.1 for grades I-4. The rule-based stimuli generated a small proportion of regularization errors. These errors reflected the difficulty with the same rules of the language that caused errors in the spelling of words (e.g. the representation o f / s / b y / z / i n an intervocalic context and the representation of e and o in an unstressed position as i and u). A few irregular non-words - e.g. foxe, 6rpdo, and dande - were also regularized. In foxe, the grapheme x was spelled as 'qs, cs' and 'ks' - all illegal spellings (but note that spelling 'foquice' was here considered a correct response since the original sounds of the stimuli were preserved and they were legally represented). Orp~o was regularized as °orpam', 'orpom' and dangte as 'danain', 'danaem', 'danai', etc. For all grades the percentage of regularization to non-words was considerably smaller than the ones for word responses. This difference could point to the use of a non-lexical bias in the spelling of words. If subjects were spelling lexicatly there would be no need to regularize words, and the index of these errors should have been at least equal to those exhibited by nonwords.

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In summary, the preponderance of non-word responses and the high percentage of regularization errors in words are indications of the use of a nonlexical process to spell words. However, in both word and non-word spelling there was a decrease in the proportion of regularization as the grade progressed - while for words this result might reflect the development of lexical spelling, in non-words it points to the acquisition of sound-spelling knowledge.

DISCUSSION

The word and non-word tasks were selected to: (1) test the explanatory power of the dual-process model of reading and spelling when applied to Portuguese, and (2) test the predictions of Frith's (1985) and Seymour & MacGregor's (1984) models of reading and spelling development. Several aspects of the data of the present study such as the interaction between word reading/spelling with non-word reading/spelling; word frequency, regularity, length and lexicality effects and the development of automaticity in both reading and spelling skills, replicate many findings previously reported in the literature. For instance, the frequency and lexicality effects, generally found among the reading and spelling of the members of all grades, suggest the use of a lexical process to read and spell familiar stimuli and the use of a non-lexical process to read and spell unfamiliar stimuli. Thus, the dual-process model, developed in the context of the English language, can be extended to explain the reading processes in Portuguese. The correlation between word and non-word reading point to an overlap of processes - that is, a simultaneous development of the lexical and non-lexical processes. This is consistent with Patterson & Morton's (1985) model in which the pronunciation latencies for words, although faster than those for non-words, form distributions with considerable overlap. Considering the predictions of recent models of reading development, Seymour (1989) proposes four indicators for the distinction between logographic and alphabetic processes, as follows: (1) observable sounding of letters, (2) the pattern of error responses, (3) the distribution of vocal RT, and (4) the effect of word length on RT. Only 2 and 4 have been controlled here. In regard to error pattern, the index of word substitutions and refusal responses were taken, by Seymour, as indicative of logographic reading and sounding and non-word responses as clues to alphabetic reading. The nonpreponderance of word responses to words and non-words and the marginal index of refusal responses exhibited by the members of all grades (most subjects could read familiar and unfamiliar words as well as non-words) led to the conclusion that, as far as error pattern is concerned, no general commitment to the logographic process is observed. As for the length effect, Seymour proposed that the greater length effect


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for non-word reading than for word reading points to a difference in the processing of words and non-words. Concerning comparisons between word and non-word length on RT, the Brazilian data showed that this length effect for non-words was significantly greater than for HF and LF words only for the 3rd and 4th grades. The display of a similar length effect for words and nonwords combined with little lexicality effect is indicative of an alphabetic process applied to both types of items. In addition, the finding that the regularity effect on reading time of LF words was limited to members of the early grades indicates that word reading in Portuguese might initially involve a nonlexical process which from the start is influenced by a developing lexical process (hence the frequency effect), which becomes predominant in later stages. Thus, these data do not support logographic/alphabetic separability: As Seymour's subjects were much younger than the subjects of this study, it is not clear whether these subjects may have showed signs of the logographic process at some earlier stage. It is at least possible that the point where the logographic process could be distinguished from the alphabetic process was missed. A. Morais' (1986) investigation seems helpful in clarifying this point since it included pre-school children. Morals found that the phonological strategy predominates at the initial stages of reading and spelling in Portuguese (the reading and spelling of Brazilian children, especially of the beginners, were not affected by visual interference but they were affected by phonological interference). Thus, we now have evidence that even beginning Portuguese speaking readers do not start reading logographically. However, Morais' study, like the present study, only included children who learned to read under synthetic methods - the phonic and the syllabic respectively - which could have favoured the use of phonological processes at initial stages of reading acquisition by these children. Thus, it is possible that even the children learning to read in Portuguese would use the visual (logographic) strategy if submitted to an analytic method from the start. This hypothesis remains to be tested. Nevertheless, considering tile issue of sequentiality in development these data appear to be in agreement with both Stuart & Coltheart's (1988) and Seymour's (1989) proposals and incompatible with Frith's strictly sequential theory. While Stuart & Coltheart envisage an orthographic system which is based on the child's phonological knowledge and skills, with not all children necessarily passing through a logographic stage, Seymour's research, although providing support for Frith's logographic/alphabetic distinction, questions the generality of this view and raises the question whether the developmental sequence postulated in Frith's model is a result of a particular instructional regime, in this case, the instructional method which emphasized visual recognition of words (sight vocabulary). It is then possible that there is a logographic process, but the question is how relevant these processes are as underlying prerequisites of the achievement of orthographic reading.

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In regard to the distinction between alphabetic and orthographic processes, for Seymour, this latter process is characterised by equivalent fast and accurate reading of words and non-words and equivalent (small or non-existent) length effects. The Brazilian data do not seem to conform to this definition. For the older children word reading was clearly distinct from non-word reading in terms of speed and accuracy. The reading of these stimuli were only equivalent in terms of the types of errors made. In addition, a strong length effect was found for both word and non-word reading in all age groups and a significant difference between the size of this effect between words and nonwords (with non-words being read significantly more slowly than words) occurred specifically in late development. This increase in lexicality effect, together with a decrease in frequency effect in older children, indicates that they are developing lexical representations for increasing vocabulary and moving from the alphabetic to the orthographic stage in reading. Thus, despite the fact that the present data do not fit into the definition of Seymour's orthographic stage, the Brazilian children seem to show a shift from an alphabetic towards an orthographic procedure. Seymour and MacGregor's orthographic process, considered as an expansion of the alphabetic system, is as the alphabetic system a translation system from print to sound. The alphabetic recognition of isolated graphemes expands into a system which recognizes vowel and consonantal clusters in their appropriate position. This orthographic lexicon that according to Seymour (1989) is capable of processing both words and non-words is incompatible with dualprocess models of skilled reading and with the data of the present study that give evidence of the development of a route for direct lexicat access in advanced stages of reading and spelling acquisition. Turning to the relationship between reading and spelling, the results of this work suggest that at the earliest stages of literacy acquisition, reading and spelling in Portuguese are accomplished by a non-lexical process. This conclusion was based on the following evidence: (1) regularity effect on reading and spelling (in reading this effect was found in the LF words and was limited to beginners), (2) length effect for non-words not significantly greater than that for HF and LF words also in the reading of young children; (3) preponderance of non-word responses to word items in both reading and spelling; (4) negligible proportions of refusal responses to words in reading and absence of these responses in spelling and (5) regularization error in words in both reading and spelling. The present data, although suggesting that the phonologically mediated strategy predominates in early reading/spelling in Portuguese, also give evidence of a lexical influence at this time. This initial simultaneous development of the lexical and non-lexical processes was indexed mainly by a general correlation between the reading/spelling of words and non-words and by the frequency effect found in the reading and spelling of all age groups. Thus, the present data suggest the use of overlapping lexical and non-lexical


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at initial stages of reading and spelling among Brazilian children. Thus, at the beginning of literacy process, the learner who is relying on graphemephoneme rules to process unfamiliar words seems to be acquiring, at the same time and very rapidly, lexical representation for familiar words. There are indications that the process of lexicalization occurs more rapidly in reading than in spelling in Portuguese. While reading words had an advantage over non-words both in terms of RT and errors, in spelling, at the beginning of development, more errors were made in LF words (especially in irregular words) than in non-words. In late development the spelling of LF words was equal (in terms of proportions of errors made) to that of non-words, which indicated that the lexical bias observed in the spelling of HF words was beginning to extend to that of LF words. Reading and spelling also differed in terms of how they were affected by regularity of spelling: while regularity only affected the reading of beginners, it had a significant effect in spelling in all age levels tested. Given that most irregular words, in Portuguese, can be pronounced following graphemephoneme rules, the absence of a regularity effect in reading cannot be taken as indicative of a lexical process and therefore does not point to a meaningful difference between reading and spelling in regard to the development of this lexical process. Finally, this work had demonstrated that the cognitive assessment used here proved to be a reliable technique for assessing the reading capacities of children and a good test of reading competence. With few exceptions, this test showed that the children judged by teachers and pedagogic supervisors as having good reading and/or spelling also performed well in either the reading or spelling assessment or in both assessments. However, it is suggested that along with this cognitive assessment, tests of phonemic knowledge and skills of the types proposed by Stuart and Coltheart and by the Brussels group (J. Morais and his colleagues) should also be applied so that it would offer a more thorough and complete assessment.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This research was financed by CNPq, Conselho Nacionat de Desenvolvimento Cientifico e Tecnol6gico, Brazil. It represents part of the work done towards a PhD thesis at the University of Dundee, Scotland, in 1989. I would like to thank Professor P. H. K. Seymour for supervising this work. I would also to thank the staff and pupils of the col6gio Pit~goras, Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais.

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APPENDIX

Experimental word lists Low Frequency

High Frequency Regular

Irregular

Rule-based

Regular

Irregular

Rule-based

WORD 1 duas fala chuva festa depois letras silabas gostava

hoje azul feliz homem amanh~ cabe~a observe crian~a

gato casa papel noite gostou coisas escreva galinha

isca vila malha marca olhava brigas chegada batalha

boxe hino a~ude 6rg~o gemido xerife higiene admirar

nora unha vejam fa~5o ingles empada receita marreca

WORD 2 caf6 ~igua porta papal folhas chap6u palavra colegas

onga cedo mam~e texto dezena muitas extenso fazendo

alto eram disse est~o porque tamb6m p~issaro redaq~to

seda jipe pesca moeda mostra cabras medalha chupeta

peso ou~a luzes le6es certas tigela cigarro descida

sono usam porto calmo barril nenhum quietos florido

Experimental non-word lists NWORD 2

NWORD 1 Regular

Irregular

Rule-based

Regular

Irregular

Rule-based

puas zala isda tila chuda vesta natha darca pelois defras olhata dripas vidacas posdava chepala cavalha

hove ezal foxe himo saliz hodem e~ute 6rp~o atanh~ lepe~a genico xeribe otserfe frien~a hagiame abmicar

gavo dasa lora inha nabel moide pejam dac~o vestou foisas infl~s embaja estreca tavinha neceida tarrega

dal6 igua seva jile lorta bavai mesca coeta dolhas cham6u nosdra gadras calafra vopegas devalha chudeta

inca cefo le~o or~a dan~e lexto juzes te~es nezema muigas cerpas figeta expenso razenco ciparro pescita

alpo uram vono esam sisse esd~o gor~o jalno lorque damp6m carril denhum j~issaco mepa~5o quiados plorito

R E A D I N G A N D S P E L L I N G IN B R A Z I L I A N P O R T U G U E S E

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NOTES I.

2.

3.

As can be seen from Appendix 1, a few items (6.25% of tile total list of words) were placed in the wrong category of regularity in the experimental list. The words containing the grapheme l receiving a second phonetic value (in a post-vocalic position) are irregular and not rule-based. Although the letter I represents different sounds according to context, the sound that I represents at the end of a syllable - [w] - can also be represented in spelling by u as in chapdu. Thus, the sound that I represents in its second context does not present a predictable one-to-one (or regular) connection with the context. Apart from these items with post-vocalic position l, ripe and receita were the other items mis-classified. This misclassification was the result of the developing sophistication of the categorisation of regularity, and results of the experiments which, in addition to their primary purpose, tested the validity and robustness of the categories previously established. In the spelling task the words ripe and receita were reclassified as rule-based and irregular respectively. In the reading task, no word was recoded. A careful analysis of the reaction time produced by all words mis-classified showed that these words did not stand out in relation to the other words in the same category. Recoding these words would not have made any significant change to the results obtained. This, however, was not the case in spelling and it proves the point that, in Portuguese, while the categories of regularity are only of marginal importance for reading, they are of great importance for spelling. An item analysis permits generalization from the specific stimulus materials used in an experiment to the population of items from which the experimental set were derived. In this analysis the items in each condition are treated as a random effect: the RTs are averaged over subjects for each item, and the statistical analysis performed on the resulting item means. The word error responses produced for all grades in the reading task were submitted to an item analysis and since no significant effect was obtained for length, the subject analysis was not attempted and the effect was not investigated for non-word error rates either.

REFERENCES Frith, U. (t985). Beneath the surface of developmental dyslexia. In: K. E. Patterson, J. C. Marshall & M. Cottheart (eds.), Surface dyslexia: Neuropsychofogical and cognitive analyses of phonological reading (pp. 301-330). London: Erlbaum. Gibson, E. J. & Levin, H. (1975). The psychology of reading. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Kimura, Y. & Bryant, P. E. (1983). Reading and writing in English and Japanese: A crosscultural study of young children, British Journal of Developmemal Psychology 1: 129144. Marsh, C., Friedman, M. I., Welch, V. & Desberg, P. (1981). A cognitive-developmental approach to reading acquisition. In: T. Waller & G. E. Mackinnon (eds.), Reading research: Advances in theory and practice, Vol. 3 (pp. 199-221). New York: Academic Press. Morais, A. G. (1986). O Emprego de estrattgias visuais e fonologicas na leitura e escrita em Portugues. Unpublished Masters Thesis. Recife: Universidade Federal de Pernambuco. Morton, J. (1969). The interaction of information in word recognition, Psychological Review 76: 165-178. Morton, J. (1979). Facilitation in word recognition: Experiments causing change in the logogen model. In: P. A. Kolers, M. E. Wrolstad & H. Bouma (eds.), Processing of visible language, Vol. 1 (pp. 259-268). New York: Plenum Press. Morton, J. (1980). The logogen model and orthographic structure. In: U. Frith (ed.), Cognitive processes in spelling (pp. 117-133). London: Academic Press. Patterson, K. E. & Morton J. (1985). From orthography to phonology: An attempt at an old interpretation. In: K. E. Patterson, J. C. Marshall & M. Coltheart (eds.), Surface dyslexia:

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Neuropsychological and cognitive analyses of phonological reading (pp. 335-359). London: Erlbaum. Pinheiro, A. M. V. & Keys, K. J. (1987). A word frequency count in Brazilian Portuguese. Unpublished work. Seymour, P. H. K. & MacGregor, C. J. (1984). Developmental dyslexia: A cognitive experimental analysis of phonological, morphemic and visual impairments, Cognitive Neuropsychology 1: 43-82. Seymour, P. H. K. (1989). Early orthographic development. Paper presented at meeting of British Psychological Society, Guilford. Stuart, K. M. & Coltheart, M. (1988). Does reading develop in a sequence of stages?, Cognition 30: 139-181.

Address for correspondences: A. M. V. Pinheiro, Department of Psychology, FAFICH, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, UFMG. Av. Ant6nio Carlos 6627, Cidade Universit~ria, 31.270, Belo Horizonte, MG, Brasil