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Contrary to the received view that reading aloud reflects processes that are 'automatic,' recent evidence suggests that some of these processes require a form of attention. This issue was investigated further by examining the effect of a prior presentation of exception words (words whose spelling-sound translation are atypical, such as pint as compared with mint, hint, or lint) and pseudohomophones (nonwords that sound identical to words, such as brane from brain) on reading aloud in the context of the psychological refractory period paradigm. For exception words, the joint effects of repetition and stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) yielded an underadditive interaction on the time to read aloud, replicating previous work--a short SOA between Task 1 and Task 2 increased reaction time (RT) and reduced the magnitude of the repetition effect relative to the long SOA. For pseudohomophones, in contrast, the joint effects of repetition and SOA were additive on RT. These results provide converging evidence for the conclusion that (a) processing up to and including the orthographic input lexicon does not require central attention when reading aloud, whereas (b) translating lexical and sublexical spelling to sound requires the use of central attention. Keywords: attention, psychological refractory period paradigm, pseudohomophones, spelling-sound translation Supplemental materials: http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0278-7393.34.2.422.supp

In 2 experiments, the authors examined whether spellings improve students' memory for pronunciations and meanings of new vocabulary words. Lower socioeconomic status minority 2nd graders (M = 7 years 7 months: n = 20) and 5th graders (M = 10 years 11 months: n = 32) were taught 2 sets of unfamiliar nouns and their meanings over several learning trials. The words were defined, depicted, and embedded in sentences. During study periods, students were shown written forms of 1 set but not the other set. Spellings were not present during word recall. Results of analyses of variance showed that spellings enhanced memory for pronunciations and meanings compared to no spellings (ps < .01). Better readers and spellers increasingly outdistanced poorer readers and spellers in remembering pronunciations over trials when spellings accompanied learning (p < .05), suggesting a Matthew effect. An explanation is that spellings activated graphophonemic connections to better secure pronunciations and meanings in memory. Results indicate that orthographic knowledge benefited vocabulary learning and diminished dependence on phonological memory. Instructional implications are that teachers should include written words as part of vocabulary instruction and that students should pronounce spellings as well as determine meanings when they encounter new vocabulary words. Keywords: vocabulary learning, orthographic memory, phonological working memory, spelling, vocabulary instruction

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A study to examine the morphological strategies used by children in spelling different word types is presented.

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Opening my Washington Post to the op-ed page one day early in the new year, my eye fell on the opening sentence of David Ignatius's column: 'Sailing smoothly into this [...]

Most writing errors are a mixture of misspellings and grammatical errors, although these days there is an increasingly thin line between what is right and what is acceptable as proper [...]