Derivational Morphology Bridges Phonology and Orthography: Insights Into the Development of Word-Specific Spellings by Superior, Average, and Poor Spellers.

Purpose Morphology, which is a bridge between phonology and orthography, plays an important role in the development of word-specific spellings. This study, which employed longitudinal sampling of typically developing students in Grades 3, 4, and 5, explored how the misspellings of words with derivational suffixes shed light on the interplay of phonological, orthographic, and morphological (POM) linguistic features as students learn to integrate POM features appropriately to generate correct spellings. Method Sixty typically developing Grade 3 students were tested using the Spelling subtest from the Wechsler Individual Achievement Test-Second Edition (Wechsler, 2001) and were divided into superior, average, and poor spellers. Students' spelling skill was then assessed using the Wechsler Individual Achievement Test-Second Edition annually for another 2 years. Misspelled derivations from these three testing sessions were analyzed for linguistic feature errors and error complexity/severity. Differences in the integration of POM features across spelling ability levels at Grades 3-5 were analyzed with Kruskal-Wallis analyses of variance. Results Longitudinal results demonstrated POM integration for the development of word-specific spellings involving derivational morphology was in its initial stages over Grades 3-5 and was influenced by spelling ability level. Information from a qualitative analysis revealed considerable variability in how students applied their POM knowledge to spell complex derivations. Conclusions Word-specific spellings draw on multiple linguistic codes-P, O, and M-and their interconnections. It involves more than an understanding of orthographic rules. Rather, accurate spelling develops through an increased understanding of the phoneme-grapheme relationships as facilitated by the identification of word parts (base + or - affixes) in written language. Educational and clinical implications are discussed.

Disfluencies along the garden path: brain electrophysiological evidence of disrupted sentence processing.

Bailey and Ferreira (2003) hypothesized and reported behavioral evidence that disfluencies (filled and silent pauses) undesirably affect sentence processing when they appear before disambiguating verbs in Garden Path (GP) sentences. Disfluencies here cause the parser to "linger" on, and apparently accept as correct, an erroneous parse. Critically, the revision process usually associated with GP-disambiguating verbs does not appear to be triggered. In order to verify this effect, we recorded event-related potentials (ERPs) time-locked to disambiguating verbs in spoken GP sentences from 15 adults. A filled pause, silent pause, or no disfluency appeared before the GP-disambiguating verbs. Principal component analysis (PCA) revealed that fluent GP sentences elicited P600, an ERP index that revision of the initial parse was attempted. Crucially, P600 was attenuated for sentences containing a filled or silent pause before the GP-disambiguating verb. However, PCA detected an N400-like activation for these items, suggesting that listeners accepted the original (erroneous) parse and continued integrating at the verb; a conclusion that is tentative and requires further study. A left anterior positivity was also detected at GP-disambiguating verbs flanked by a filled pause. Discussion focuses on what these preliminary findings tell us about how oral comprehension proceeds when the time-course of sentence processing is disrupted.

Maternal epistemological perspectives and variations in mental state talk.

PURPOSE: This study examined how complexity of maternal epistemological beliefs predicted mothers' and children's talk about the mind. METHOD: Twenty-eight mothers of 5- to 10-year-olds completed a measure of receptive vocabulary, and mothers and children participated in a storytelling task specifically designed to elicit talk about the mind. Their use of mental state terms to encode pragmatic functions and mothers' epistemologies were assessed and compared. RESULTS: Maternal mental state talk and amount of talk increased with epistemological complexity. With the number of utterances held constant, mothers with simple, dualistic perspectives of knowledge used mental states more often to direct interaction; mothers with more complex epistemologies used mental states more often to encourage child reflection. Mothers with the less complex perspective underperformed on the receptive vocabulary measure in comparison to others. Children's amount of talk and use of a variety of mental state terms also increased with maternal epistemological complexity. The amount of talk and mental state terms produced by mothers and children frequently persisted after the effects of maternal receptive vocabulary were removed. CONCLUSIONS: Maternal epistemologies predict several qualities of mothers' and children's mental state talk that may contribute to children's developing theory of mind.

African American English dialect and performance on nonword spelling and phonemic awareness tasks.

PURPOSE: To evaluate the role of dialect on phonemic awareness and nonword spelling tasks. These tasks were selected for their reliance on phonological and orthographic processing, which may be influenced by dialect use. METHOD: Eighty typically developing African American children in Grades 1 and 3 were first screened for dialect use and then completed a standardized test of phonological processing and a nonword spelling measure. The influence of dialect was analyzed in both experimental tasks, followed by a qualitative analysis of dialect use in nonword spellings. RESULTS: Dialect density measures based solely on the use of African American English (AAE) phonological features explained few differences in phonological processing scores. In contrast, correlations indicated that children with higher dialect densities produced more nonword spelling errors influenced by AAE, an effect most evident in Grade 3. Qualitative analyses revealed AAE phonological features occurring in many of the misspelled nonwords. CONCLUSION: After Grade 2, nonword spelling may be more sensitive to the effects of dialect variation than are phonemic awareness tasks. It is suggested that spelling may be a more sensitive clinical indicator of difficulties in integrating the phonological and orthographic information needed for fluent decoding skill.

Spelling patterns in preadolescents with atypical language skills: phonological, morphological, and orthographic factors.

Several investigations have considered the spelling abilities of children with reading disability; however, the spelling patterns of children with a language learning disability (LLD) have been largely ignored. This study examined the spelling error patterns of three groups of children who met strict inclusion criteria-those with a known LLD (n = 8), chronological-age-matched peers (CA; n = 8), and a younger spelling-age-matched group (SA; n = 8). An experimental spelling measure was specially designed and administered to elucidate the underlying linguistic features (clusters, digraphs, etc.) and linguistic classifications (phonological, orthographical, morphological) of misspellings. Based on inferential statistical analyses, a general pattern was that the LLD group and the SA group always differed from the CA group, whereas the LLD group performed similarly to the SA group. This finding lends credence to the hypothesis that children with an LLD, like children with reading disability, are delayed in spelling development rather than following a deviant developmental process. However, a qualitative analysis indicated two specific patterns. First, the LLD group had more trouble than did the SA group in representing the basic phonological structure of words, when complexity was increased by word length or linguistic structure. Second, in contrast to the SA group, the LLD group had greater omissions of inflected and derived morphological markers. These findings point to the critical role of morphology as the mediator between and form and meaning.

Does my identity speak English? A pragmatic approach to the social world of an English language learner with language impairment.

The case description provides a comprehensive picture of the complex social and linguistic factors that shape the social identity of an English language learner with the additional challenge of language impairment (LI). These issues were explored over 6 months with Fernando, an 8-year-old, Spanish-speaking male with LI in grade 3. A pragmatic, or practical, approach to problem solving was developed for two purposes: first, to obtain a multifaceted understanding of Fernando's world at school, and second, to arrive at possible educational/clinical solutions that met a standard of cultural appropriateness and practicality. The patterns found that, contrary to teacher interpretations of Fernando as inattentive, he employed both perseverance and saving face strategies, which appeared to function as practices for preserving his self-esteem in different situations. These patterns led to specific recommendations for collaborative instruction and intervention that would better integrate and support Fernando's social and bilingual learning needs while also meeting standards of cultural appropriateness and practicality.

A New Look at Performance on Theory-of-Mind Tasks by Adolescents With Autism Spectrum Disorder.

PURPOSE: A hallmark of autistic spectrum disorder (ASD) is disruption in theory-of-mind development, including the understanding of false beliefs. Previous studies have typically assessed the development of first- and second-order false belief concepts in ASD, with tasks primarily emphasizing physical causality and logical inferencing. The present study investigated how preadolescents and adolescents with ASD performed on false belief tasks that included social inferencing of psychological states as well as logical inferencing of physical states. METHOD: Two categories of tasks were administered: four traditional logical inferencing tasks and four social inferencing tasks specifically developed for this study. In addition, a prompt hierarchy was included to ascertain if performance on both task types improved. Participants were 45 children and adolescents primarily selected from three urban school districts: 15 adolescents with a previous diagnosis of ASD (ASD group); 15 typically developing children matched for age, gender, and ethnicity (CA group); and 15 typically developing children matched for language age, gender, and ethnicity (LA group). RESULTS: Three findings were pertinent. First, the CA group performed at higher levels than did the LA group and the ASD group on both task sets. Second, although the CA and the LA groups performed equally well on both the logical and the social inferencing tasks, the ASD group performed better on the social inferencing tasks. Finally, the prompt hierarchy significantly improved overall task performance for the ASD and LA groups. CLINICAL IMPLICATIONS: These findings indicate that task type, variations in vocabulary ability, and the provision of support influenced performance on the false belief tasks.

Scaffolds for Learning to Read in an Inclusion Classroom.

PURPOSE: This article describes a study on the scaffolding of learning to read in a primary-level, continuous-progress, inclusion classroom that stressed a critical thinking curriculum and employed a collaborative teaching model. Two emergent reading groups were the focus of study-one group that was taught by a general educator and the other by a special educator. The primary purposes were to discern the teachers' discourse patterns in order to define whether scaffolding sequences were more directive or more supportive and the degree to which these sequences represented differentiated instruction for children with a language learning disability (LLD). METHOD: Two students with an LLD and two younger, typically developing peers were videotaped in their emergent reading groups during an 8-week period. The distribution, types, and functions of teacher scaffolding sequences were examined. RESULTS: Both team members primarily used directive scaffolding sequences, suggesting that the assistance provided to children emphasized only direct instruction (skill learning) and not analytical thinking concerning phonemegrapheme relationships (strategy learning). Distribution of scaffolding sequence types directed to the four students indicated that the two children with an LLD were receiving reading instruction that was undifferentiated from the two typically developing, younger children. CLINICAL IMPLICATIONS: In order for children with an LLD to benefit from inclusion, explicit, systematic, and intensive instruction in phonological awareness and spelling-sound relationships should be implemented within the context of multilevel instruction that balances skill- and strategy-based learning.