Haskins Publications

Number	434
Year	1983
Drawer	7
Entry Date	11/19/1999
Authors	Hanson, V. L., Shankweiler, D., & Fischer, F. W.
Contact
Publication	Cognition, 14, 323-344.
url
Abstract	Administered a 2-part spelling test and the Comprehension subtest of the Gates-MacGinitie Reading Test to 27 profoundly deaf and 37 normal-hearing college students. The spelling test examined ability to spell words varying in the degree to which their correct orthographic representation could be derived from the linguistic structure of English. Both groups were sensitive to the underlying regularities of the orthography as indicated by greater accuracy on linguistically derivable words than on irregular words. Comparison of accuracy on a production task and on a multiple-choice recognition task showed that the performance of both deaf and hearing Subjects benefited from the recognition format, especially in the spelling of irregular words. Differences in the underlying spelling process for deaf and hearing spellers were revealed: Deaf Subjects produced fewer phonetically accurate misspellings than did the hearing Subjects. Nonetheless, the deaf spellers tended to observe the formational constraints of English phonology and morphology in their misspellings. Results suggest that deaf Subjects are able to develop an appreciation for the structural properties of the orthography but their spelling may be guided by an accurate representation of the phonetic structure of words to a lesser degree than it is for hearing spellers.
Notes