Relationship of verbal ability and working memory to spelling achievement and learning to spell

Abstract

Several research studies (Frith, 1978, 1980; Ormrod, 1985, 1986a) point to the notion that good spellers attend closely to the letters of the words they read, but that poor spellers with good reading skills (dysgraphic spellers) do not. Two possible explanations for this difference in reading style are that (a) good spellers are slower readers than dysgraphic spellers, and (b) good spellers have greater working memory capacity than dysgraphic spellers. Forty‐eight undergraduates were administered a spelling achievement test, a learning‐to‐spell task, the Iowa Silent Reading Tests (ISRT), and a modification of Daneman and Carpenter's (1980) measure of working memory. Positive correlations between spelling tasks and ISRT reading speed were contrary to the hypothesis that good spellers were slower readers. In stepwise multiple regressions, working memory accounted for a significant portion of the variance of the spelling measures beyond that accounted for by the ISRT scores. It is concluded that an underlying source of difficulty for dysgraphic spellers, one that may be related to the reading style they exhibit, is a more limited working memory capacity.

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