Interaction between the lexical and sublexical spelling procedures: A study on Italian primary school children.

Studies investigating the interaction between lexical and sublexical information in a developmental context are rare and mainly focussed on reading abilities. The present study investigated the interaction between the lexical and sublexical spelling procedures by studying the effects of orthographic neighborhood on pseudoword spelling in Italian primary school children. A spelling-to-dictation task was administered to sixty-three typically developing children: 31 attending third grade and 32 attending fifth grade. Stimuli were pseudowords derived from high or low frequency words by changing either the first (early diverging pseudoword) or the fourth letter (late diverging pseudoword). The stimuli varied also for length (short vs. long). Results highlighted facilitatory lexical effects on pseudoword spelling. Long pseudowords were spelled as accurately as short stimuli if derived from high frequency base-words. Furthermore, early diverging pseudowords if derived from high frequency words were spelled more accurately than other types of stimuli The results support the view that, similarly to what predicted for opaque orthographies by current models of spelling, lexical information is exploited also by young learners of a transparent orthography as Italian.