Adolescent weak decoders writing in a shallow orthography: process and product

It has been hypothesised that students with dyslexia struggle with writing because of a word level focus that reduces attention to higher level textual features (structure, theme development). This may result from difficulties with spelling and/or from difficulties with reading. 26 Norwegian upper secondary students (M = 16.9 years) with weak decoding skills and 26 age-matched controls composed expository texts by keyboard under two conditions: normally and with letters masked to prevent them reading what they were writing. Weak decoders made more spelling errors and produced poorer quality text. Their inter key-press latencies were substantially longer pre-word, at word-end, and within-word. These findings provide some support for the word-level focus hypothesis, although we found that weak decoders were slightly less likely to engage in word-level editing. Masking did not affect differences between weak decoders and controls indicating that reduced fluency was associated with production rather than monitoring what they had produced

Cognitive predictors of shallow-orthography spelling speed and accuracy in 6th grade children

Spelling accuracy and time course was investigated in a sample of 100 Norwegian 6th grade students completing a standardized spelling-to-dictation task. Students responded by keyboard with accurate recordings of response-onset latency (RT) and inter-keypress interval (IKI). We determined effects of a number of child-level cognitive ability factors, and of word-level factors—particularly the location within the word of a spelling challenge (e.g., letter doubling), if present. Spelling accuracy was predicted by word reading (word split) performance, non-word spelling accuracy, keyboard key-finding speed and short-term memory span. Word reading performance predicted accuracy just for words with spelling challenges. For correctly spelled words, RT was predicted by non-word spelling response time and by speed on a key-finding task, and mean IKI by non-verbal cognitive ability, word reading, non-word spelling response time, and key-finding speed. Compared to words with no challenge, mean IKI was shorter for words with an initial challenge and longer for words with a mid-word challenge. These findings suggest that spelling is not fully planned when typing commences, a hypothesis that is confirmed by the fact that IKI immediately before within word challenges were reliably longer than elsewhere within the same word. Taken together our findings imply that routine classroom spelling tests better capture student competence if they focus not only on accuracy but also on production time course

The deep mountains of Denmark - a study of the effects of orthographic depth on reading, spelling and vocabulary in a first and in a second language

Master's thesis in Literacy studiesThis thesis investigates the effects of orthographic depth of L1 on orthographic learning and reading, spelling and vocabulary knowledge in L1 and L2. Children from three countries, Denmark, Norway and Sweden were tested on reading, spelling, and vocabulary knowledge in their L1 and in their L2, English. It was expected that the Danish participants would be poorer orthographic learners, and also readers and spellers in both L1 and L2, due to their deep orthography. It was expected that the Norwegian and Swedish participants would be better orthographic learners, and that they would learn to read and spell more easily in both L1 and L2, due to their shallow orthography. The reading, spelling and vocabulary tests in L1 consisted of frequency-balanced cognates, and words of decreasing frequency in L2. A novel-word learning task was used to assess orthographic learning. The results showed that the Danish children made more spelling errors, and read slower and less accurate for both L1 and L2, than the Norwegian and Swedish children. Moreover, Danish children knew the meaning of fewer words in L1 and L2. It is concluded that shallow orthographies promote orthographic learning, and that orthographic learning mediates reading and spelling in L1 and L2

«My Spelling is Wobbly» – Causes and consequences of word-level disfluencies in written

The aim of this PhD-project was to explore word-level processes involved in writing, and in particular word-level disfluencies. I have investigate what predicts word-level processes and disfluencies, and how word-level disfluencies can influence aspects of the final text. Two broad questions were addressed; What are the causes of wordlevel disfluency in written production?, and What, if any, are the consequences of word-level disfluency when the writer is composing full text? Article 1 investigates the writing process and the written product of a group of dyslexic students and a group of control students. Results from this article indicate that students diagnosed with dyslexia have a word-level focus when writing, and that this word-level focus is related to the writing process and not them struggling to read what they have written. Article 2 is an investigation of the spelling process and spelling accuracy in a group of 6th graders. Results indicate that the spelling process persists beyond typing onset. Moreover, word-split performance and non-word spelling accuracy predict spelling accuracy. Spelling response latency was predicted by non-word spelling response latency, and by key-finding speed. Keystroke intervals within words was predicted by word-split performance, non-word spelling RT and key finding speed. Article 3 investigates the relationship between spelling, motor execution processes involved in keyboarding, text composing processes and text quality measures. Results indicate that the transcription measures; copying, key finding and spelling, all influence word-level processes when producing text. Moreover, results indicate that word-level disfluencies have a negative impact on measures of text quality. Article 4 is a theoretical investigation of existing technical aids for writing support, and the general ideas underpinning these. A shift from having correction as the main element, to a writing aid having fluency as the main principle is suggested. My conclusion is that word-level disfluencies are related to spelling, and that wordlevel disfluencies can influence aspects of the final text

Learning Handwriting: Factors Affecting Pen-Movement Fluency in Beginning Writers

Skilled handwriting of single letters is associated not only with a neat final product but also with fluent pen-movement, characterized by a smooth pen-tip velocity profile. Our study explored fluency when writing single letters in children who were just beginning to learn to handwrite, and the extent to which this was predicted by the children’s pen-control ability and by their letter knowledge. 176 Norwegian children formed letters by copying and from dictation (i.e., in response to hearing letter sounds). Performance on these tasks was assessed in terms of the counts of velocity inversions as the children produced sub-letter features that would be produced by competent handwriters as a single, smooth (ballistic) action. We found that there was considerable variation in these measures across writers, even when producing well-formed letters. Children also copied unfamiliar symbols, completed various pen-control tasks (drawing lines, circles, garlands, and figure eights), and tasks that assessed knowledge of letter sounds and shapes. After controlling for pen-control ability, pen-movement fluency was affected by letter knowledge (specifically children’s performance on a task that required selecting graphemes on the basis of their sound). This was the case when children retrieved letter forms from dictated letter sounds, but also when directly copying letters and, unexpectedly, when copying unfamiliar symbols. These findings suggest that familiarity with a letter affects movement fluency during letter production but may also point towards a more general ability to process new letter-like symbols in children with good letter knowledge

The process-disruption hypothesis: how spelling and typing skill affects written composition process and product.

This study investigates the possibility that lack of fluency in spelling and/or typing disrupts writing processes in such a way as to cause damage to the substance (content and structure) of the resulting text. 101 children (mean age 11 years 10 months), writing in a relatively shallow orthography (Norwegian), composed argumentative essays using a simple text editor that provided accurate timing for each keystroke. Production fluency was assessed in terms of both within-word and word-initial interkey intervals and pause counts. We also assessed the substantive quality of completed texts. Students also performed tasks in which we recorded time to pressing keyboard keys in response to spoken letter names (a keyboard knowledge measure), response time and interkey intervals when spelling single, spoken words (spelling fluency), and interkey intervals when typing a simple sentence from memory (transcription fluency). Analysis by piecewise structural equation modelling gave clear evidence that all three of these measures predict fluency when composing full text. Students with longer mid-word interkey intervals when composing full text tended to produce texts with slightly weaker theme development. However, we found no other effects of composition fluency measures on measures of the substantive quality of the completed text. Our findings did not, therefore, provide support for the process-disruption hypothesis, at least in the context of upper-primary students writing in a shallow orthography

Learning handwriting: Factors affecting pen-movement fluency in beginning writers.

Data and script for Fitjar, C. L., Rønneberg, V., Torrance, M., & Nottbusch, G. (2021). Learning handwriting: Factors affecting pen-movement fluency in beginning writers. Frontiers in Psychology

Exploring transcription processes when children with and without reading and writing difficulties produce written text using speech recognition

The aim of this study was to investigate composition and error-correction processes, and their relationship with production rate, in children, age 10-12, with and without reading and writing difficulties using speech-to-text (STT) to write expository texts in Swedish. Measures of individual abilities: working memory, spelling ability and decoding ability, and the ability to interact with the STT tool under optimal conditions (STT success rate) were collected. For both those with and without difficulties, neither working memory, nor spelling or decoding ability predicted burst length nor accuracy. Only a child’s STT success rate did predict accuracy during text composition. Further, none of the individual abilities predicted choice of error-correction modality (keyboard or STT) or error correction functionality. This indicates that the children’s behavior were independent of these abilities. Furthermore, production rate was significantly predicted by both burst length and accuracy, and by working memory, but not by error-correction behaviour, nor by spelling or decoding ability. This indicates that composing text using STT is a cognitively complex process placing heavy demands on working memory. Dictating more than one word at a time and combining STT and keyboard use were identified as two useful strategies that can be taught in STT instruction

Study protocol: DigiHand – the emergence of handwriting skills in digital classooms

This protocol article presents the project “DigiHand: The emergence of handwriting skills in digital classrooms.”1 The project is a longitudinal natural experiment investigating how the use of different writing tools influences students’ handwriting and letter knowledge, word reading, spelling, written narrative composition and teacher–student interactions in Grades 1 and 2 (students aged 6 years in Grade 1). Participants are 33 schools (n = 585 students) representing three occurring conditions for learning writing skills in early years. Students in these conditions either (1) learn to write on a tablet while postponing handwriting, (2) learn both to handwrite and write on a tablet or (3) learn to handwrite. Effect analyses are conducted on four main domains of measures: (i) students’ letter knowledge, spelling competence and word reading competence; (ii) students’ handwriting fluency; (iii) students’ ability to write narrative compositions; (iv) quality of teacher–student interactions. This protocol describes the background, design and pre- and outcome measures for the research project.publishedVersio

Handwriting versus keyboarding: Does writing modality affect quality of narratives written by beginning writers?

To date, there is no clear evidence to support choosing handwriting over keyboarding or vice versa as the modality children should use when they frst learn to write. 102 Norwegian frst-grade children from classrooms that used both electronic touchscreen keyboard on a digital tablet and pencil-and-paper for writing instruction wrote narratives in both modalities three months after starting school and were assessed on several literacy-related skills. The students’ texts were then analysed for a range of text features, and were rated holistically. Data were analysed using Bayesian methods. These permitted evaluation both of evidence in favour of a diference between modalities and of evidence in favour of there being no diference. We found moderate to strong evidence in favour of no diference between modalities. We also found moderate to strong evidence against modality efects being moderated by students’ literacy ability. Findings may be specifc to students who are just starting to write, but suggest that for children at this stage of development writing performance is independent of modality