Haskins Publications

Number	1217
Year	1999
Drawer	23
Entry Date	08/28/2001
Authors	Post, Y.V. , Swank, P.R., Hiscock, M., & Fowler, A.E.
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Publication	Annals of Dyslexia , 49:161-194
url	http://www.haskins.yale.edu/Reprints/HL1217.pdf
Abstract	Tested the hypothesis that spelling errors involving vowels are linked to difficulties in vowel perception. 155 second to fourth graders were divided into 5 groups according to reading skill and were tested on a variety of measures involving vowel identification, vowel discrimination, and vowel spelling. Despite little difficulty on the vowel discrimination tasks, participants made many errors on the vowel identification measures. Vowel identification errors were linearly associated with reading skill with least skilled readers having significantly more difficulty with stressed "short" vowels as in dip than with stressed "long" vowels as in deep, presented in identical contexts. Vowel identification errors were also associated with vowel spelling errors. It is hypothesized that errors in vowel spelling may relate to weak access to the phoneme at the oral language level and may indicate a lack of constancy in the representation of vowels by less skilled readers. Weaknesses in vowel perception can be detected with a simple vowel identification test in which phonological similarity of test items is used as linguistic manipulation, and where phonemes must be identified based on presentation of a single test item in a forced choice format.
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