Sound-symbol learning and the relationship to spelling in first-grade children

Early spelling depends on the ability to understand the alphabetic principle and to translate speech sounds into visual symbols (letters). Thus, the ability to associate sound-symbol pairs might be an important predictor of spelling development. Here, we examined the relation between sound-symbol learning (SSL) and early spelling skills. A large sample of first-grade children (N = 365) was tested on well-known cognitive predictors of spelling ability (intelligence, phoneme awareness, and verbal short-term memory) and completed a novel sound-symbol learning paradigm, which required the serial application of newly learned sound-symbol correspondences to mirror spelling acquisition. The results revealed that performance on the SSL task explained unique variance in spelling performance in young children at risk of spelling problems beyond well-known cognitive predictors of spelling. The SSL task can be a useful tool for the early identification of spelling problems given that the SSL differentiated between children with poor and typical spelling skills.