Spelling performance of children with developmental verbal dyspraxia

The ability of four children with developmental verbal dyspraxia to imitate, spell, read and copy regular single-syllable words was investigated. The children were found to have more difficulty in spelling and reading these words than a group of children with normal speech who were matched for reading age. It is suggested that 'dyspraxic' children are subject to a phonetic spelling deficit which arises because of a difficulty in segmenting words at a speech-sound level.