Orthographic learning and the relationship to spelling in German second graders

Orthographic knowledge is crucial for spelling words correctly and is deficient in children with poor spelling skills. However, the cognitive processes involved in building-up orthographic representations still need to be identified. A total of 343 second-graders (83 poor spellers and 260 typical spellers) completed an orthographic learning task that focused on pseudowords differing in the complexity of the underlying German spelling phenomena: st/sp spelling (simple) or double-consonant spelling (complex). To identify, where in the learning process difficulties emerge, we assessed for both phenomena: (a) learning of novel pseudowords, (b) generalization, and (c) storing. Results showed that learning was dependent on the complexity of the spelling phenomenon: for both groups, pseudowords of the complex phenomenon were more difficult to learn, to generalize, and to store. Children with poor spelling skills produced fewer items correctly already at the beginning of the learning process and showed more difficulties in learning, but their progress in generalization and memorization was comparable to that of children with typical spelling abilities. Regression analyses further revealed that the orthographic learning task explains unique variance in spelling performance beyond well-known cognitive predictors of spelling.