Washington University in St. Louis / Psychology / Brett Kessler

Treiman, Rebecca & Brett Kessler. 2006. Spelling as statistical learning: Using consonantal context to spell vowels. Journal of Educational Psychology 98(3). 642–652. doi:10.1037/0022-0663.98.3.642

Abstract

Although English lacks 1-to-1 relationships between sounds and spellings, considering the context in which a phoneme occurs can often aid in selecting a spelling. For example, /ɑ/ is typically spelled as a when it follows /w/, as in wand, but as o when it follows other consonants, as in pond. In 2 experiments, the authors asked whether children’s spellings of vowels in nonwords were affected by the following (Experiment 1) and preceding (Experiment 2) consonants. The participants in both experiments had spelling levels that ranged from kindergarten and 1st grade through high school. Children with higher levels of spelling skill took more advantage of context, and use of preceding context generally emerged earlier than use of following context. The results are interpreted within the framework of a statistical learning view of spelling and spelling development.

Paper

• The official published paper.
• Prepublication draft, in submission format. This article may not exactly replicate the final version published in the APA journal. It is not the copy of record. PDF.

Data

Summary by Type of Stimulus

Proportion of critical spellings:

Proportion of Most Common Spelling in Monosyllabic Vocabulary

The following table tells how often each vowel investigated in the experiment appears with its most common (modal) spelling in text targeted at children of various ages. The Learned column tells at what reading-group level the children begin to significantly distinguish between experimental and control contexts in their spelling of the vowel. Rows are sorted by the Average column, to illustrate the correlation between how common the modal spelling is and how long it takes children to learn to observe the experimental context when spelling the vowel.

Vocabulary

CSV file summarizing vocabulary counts across grades.

For each reading-level group, statistics were computed with vocabulary counts appropriate to the upper end of the group, as per Zeno et al. For the first group, these were combined kindergarten/grade 1 counts; for the remaining groups, Grade 3, 5, 8, and 12, respectively. Words were counted only if Zeno broke down the statistics by grade level.

Summaries by grade. The brief listings include counts for each of the spellings used for the vowels; the full listings include also a list of all of the words used in the counts:

Criteria used for counting words:

• Only syllables at the edges of words were considered. Stress level of vowel was ignored. Final silent e was ignored in judging whether the critical vowel was found.

• For experiment 1 /ɛ/, conditioning context: Word ends in /ɛd/. Typical context: Word ends in /ɛ/ plus any of /p/, /b/, /dʒ/, /ɡ/, /tʃ/, /k/. Critical vowel tabulated: ea.

• For experiment 1 /i/, conditioning context: Word ends in /i/ plus either /d/ or /p/. Typical context: Word ends in /i/ plus any of /ɡ/, /θ/, /m/, /ð/, /st/. Critical vowel tabulated: ee.

• For experiment 1 /ʊ/, conditioning context: Word ends in /ʊ/ plus any of /tʃ/, /ʃ/, /s/, /l/. Typical context: Word ends in /ʊ/ plus any of /f/, /k/. Critical vowel tabulated: u.

• For experiment 1 /aʊ/, conditioning context: Word ends in /aʊ/ plus any of /l/ or /n/. Typical context: Word ends in /aʊ/ plus any of /dʒ/, /tʃ/, /s/. Critical vowel tabulated: ow.

• For experiment 1 /aɪ/, conditioning context: Word ends in /aɪt/. Typical context: Word ends in /aɪ/ plus any of /b/, /v/, /f/, /s/. (NB: earlier paper includes /z/ and /d/. Don't know if that was a mistake, but it seems odd to gratuitously throw in what will amount to many inflected forms, when none of the stimuli ended in those sounds.) Critical vowel tabulated: igh.

• For experiment 2 /ɑ/, conditioning context: Word begins in one or more consonants of which the last is /w/; followed by /ɑ/, followed by a consonant other than an approximant (i.e., one of /dʒ/, /tʃ/, /ð/, /ɡ/, /ʃ/, /θ/, /ʒ/, /ŋ/, /b/, /d/, /f/, /k/, /l/, /m/, /n/, /p/, /s/, /t/, /v/, /z/). Typical context: Word begins in one or more consonants of which the last is not /w/; followed by /ɑ/, followed by a consonant other than an approximant. Critical vowel tabulated: a.

• For experiment 2 /ɚ/, conditioning context: Word begins /wɚ/, followed by a consonant other than an approximant. Typical context: Word begins with one or more consonants of which the last is not /w/; followed by /ɚ/, followed by a consonant other than an approximant. Critical vowel tabulated: or.

• For experiment 2 /u/, conditioning context: Word begins with one or more consonants of which the last is not a coronal or /j/: i.e., it is one of /ɡ/, /b/, /f/, /h/, /k/, /m/, /p/, /v/; followed by /u/; followed by a consonant other than an approximant. Typical context: Word begins begins with one or more consonants of which the last is a coronal, i.e., one of /dʒ/, /tʃ/, /ð/, /ʃ/, /θ/, /ʒ/, /d/, /l/, /n/, /r/, /s/, /t/, /z/; followed by /u/; followed by a consonant other than an approximant. Critical vowel tabulated: oo.

Consistencies of Vowels

CSV file showing spelling (sound to letter) consistency of each vowel in the study, computed over all environments. The frequencies used in the computations weight each word by the log of its frequency (+ 2) for the relevant grades as given by Zeno et al.

APA citation:

Treiman, R., & Kessler, B. (2006). Spelling as statistical learning: Using consonantal context to spell vowels. Journal of Educational Psychology, 98, 642–652. doi:10.1037/0022-0663.98.3.642

Webster: Brett Kessler

Last change 2009-08-04T13:21:48-0500.