II. ANALYSIS OF LEARNING TO SPELL
It is virtually impossible for an educated adult, whose spelling habits have long ago become automatic, to reconstruct from introspection the long, difficult, and complex processes through which he passed in learning to communicate by means of correctly spelled words. Such an adult may gain some idea of what is involved in the spelling process by confronting himself with the task of learning to spell and write words upside down and backwards, but even so the experience of the child is not duplicated.
Analysis teaches us that this aspect of linguistic attainment ordinarily involves the formation of a series of connections approximately as follows:
(1) An object, act, quality, or relation is “bound” to a certain sound, which has often been repeated while the object is pointed at, the act performed, and so forth. In order that the connection may become definitely established, it is necessary (a) that the individual should be able to identify for himself the object, act, quality, or relation, and (b) that he should be able to recollect the particular vocal sounds which have been associated therewith. When this is accomplished, the sound has become a word.
(2) The sound (word) becomes “bound” with performance of the very complex muscular act necessary for articulating it.
(3) When school age is reached, certain printed and written symbols, arbitrarily chosen, visually representing sounds, become “bound” (a) with the recognized objects, acts, and so forth, and (b) with their vocal representatives, so that when the symbols are presented to sight, the word can be uttered by the perceiving individual. This is what we should call ability “to read” the word.
(4) The separate elements of the symbols (letters) become associated with each other in the proper sequence, and have the effect of calling each other up to consciousness in the prescribed order. When this has taken place we say that the individual can spell orally.
(5) The child by a slow, voluntary process “binds” the visual perception of the separate letters with the muscular movements of arm, hand, and fingers necessary to copy the word.
(6) The child “binds” the representatives in consciousness of the visual symbols with the motor responses necessary to produce the written word spontaneously, at pleasure.
This analysis is probably not exhaustive, but it provides a foundation on which to construct an understanding of poor spellers. Obviously, poor spelling may be due to one or another of quite different defects, or to a combination of several defects. In an ability so complex there is opportunity for the occurrence of a great variety of deficiencies. In any particular case the underlying cause can be discovered only by means of a psychological examination covering the various processes involved.
III. PSYCHOLOGICAL EXAMINATION OF POOR SPELLERS[[14]]
Poor spelling, like poor reading, may be due to sensory defects, either of the ear or of the eye. If sounds are indistinct, or if visual stimuli are vague or distorted, the prescribed connections involving these elements will be difficult to form. Thus tests of auditory and visual acuity must be given. If any sensory defect is revealed, it should be corrected, if it is corrigible.
The degree of general intelligence must be determined. Failure to learn to spell is frequently symptomatic of general incompetence, though not so frequently as in the case of reading. The correlation coefficients cluster around .50 only, in the case of spelling and general intelligence. Quite a number of children will be found, whose achievement in spelling shows marked discrepancy with general capacity. Spelling is more mechanical than reading, so that the stupid may more easily master it by tireless drill, while the intelligent are not likely to derive so much pleasure from it or to practice it so much.
The connections which are described in our analysis under (2) may be inadequately or incorrectly developed. This would be faulty pronunciation. This is undoubtedly a very prolific cause of poor spelling. Such errors as “a-f-t-e-r-w-o-o-d-s” for “afterwards,” “w-h-e-n-t” for “went,” “p-r-e-h-a-p-s” for “perhaps,” will serve to illustrate this point. In observations on poor spellers, such errors are found by the score, and it is discovered that the words are pronounced as spelled. Thus the poor speller should be tested for the pronunciation of the words which he misspells. It may be that drill in correct pronunciation is what is needed, in order to improve his spelling.
Faulty pronunciation may itself be due to various causes. In the majority of cases it doubtless arises from false auditory perception, as in such misspellings as “hares breath” for “hair’s breadth,” and “Mail Brothers” for “Mayo Brothers.” In other cases it arises from inability to articulate properly, as with children who stammer or lisp, or have nasal obstructions.
It may be that a pupil’s weakness lies in the formation of connections, which we have noted in our analysis under (3). The formation of these connections involves visual perception, habits of interpretation through the eye, which have been found to be of first rate importance in spelling. We may refer back to the discussion of the perceptual factors in reading. In spelling, also, it has been discovered that error is not distributed at random, but follows certain laws. For instance, there is a constant tendency to shorten, rather than to lengthen words in misspelling them. The influence of any letter over error varies greatly with the position of the letter in the word. The last halves of misspelled words show many more errors than are found in first halves. From these and other facts it is apparent that failures in visual perception contribute to the difficulties of poor spellers. In order to determine whether such is the case with any particular child, it will be necessary to make an analysis of his work, to see whether the distribution of his errors reveals such perceptual weakness. If a child can spell the first halves of words correctly, but does not spell the last halves, or if he learns to spell the upper halves of words correctly, but cannot spell the lower halves of them, the remedy is to bring about readjustments of attention, whereby he will look at those portions of words, which formerly he failed, unconsciously, to see.
Poor spelling may be due to sheer failure to remember—failure to retain impressions which were originally clearly and correctly perceived. This may mean simply that the child requires unusually numerous repetitions before he can form the connections described under (4) in our analysis; or it may be that his memory span is abnormally brief, and that he cannot easily associate more than three or four elements together as a unitary sequence. Tests of memory span for various kinds of materials should be instituted, in order to gain light on this point. If it appears that his performance is decidedly below the normal for his age, especially when the material is letters, it may be concluded that too brief memory span is probably playing a part in his difficulties. This could be checked up further by an analysis of his spellings, to see to what extent he spells short words correctly, but misspells longer words. Emphasis upon syllabication, prefixes, suffixes, and other short units should be helpful. The child might be able to remember three syllables of three letters each, but unable to retain, with the same amount of practice, one word of nine letters. Psychologically, these two tasks are different.
Smedley suggested years ago that there might be a “rational element” in spelling, whereby knowledge of the meaning of words would contribute to the correct spelling of them, in and of itself. Connections involving meaning are considered in our analysis under (1). Children produce an especially great proportion of error in spelling words which have no meaning for them. Hence it is of interest to test the child for knowledge of the meaning of words which he misspells. It is necessary to find out whether the words which confuse him are in his vocabulary.
Motor awkwardness and incoördination may contribute to poor spelling. Here are involved the connections discussed by us under (5) and (6). In written spelling (with which education is chiefly concerned), it is necessary not only to know what symbols are required, but to execute them successfully with arm, hand, and fingers. Here we must have recourse to motor tests, for steadiness, coördination, and speed of voluntary movement. Occasionally one finds a child who does much better at oral spelling than he does at written spelling. In such cases, improvement in handwriting is what is needed, either in respect to rate or quality. A slow writer may misspell many words if he attempts to hurry.
Many of the mistakes of poor spellers are merely lapses. These are errors committed by children who “know better,” who can correct the mistake spontaneously as soon as attention is called to it. There are wide individual differences in the liability to lapse. It is difficult to see what remedial measures may be taken to improve those whose disability is due largely to lapsing, since lapses are not only involuntary, but for the most part unconscious; there is no awareness of them until one perceives them anew. Examples of lapsing may be seen in “Complicated musich which he heard played,” and “It mak make an impression,” for “It may make an impression.”
One might suggest that children who show this tendency in marked degree should be trained to lay aside for a few minutes all written communications; then to take up their work and look anew at each word, in order to correct all lapses. It is not known experimentally how long an interval must elapse in order that writing may “get cold,” so that lapses may be detected by the author of them. A few minutes will probably suffice.
Transfer of habits previously acquired is occasionally the cause of misspelling. Children who have learned to read and spell a phonetic language, like German, or a language that proceeds from right to left in spelling, are prone to difficulty with English spelling. The possible existence of such an influence is to be determined by taking the school history.
Sometimes it happens that the errors of the child are of one particular kind. Such idiosyncrasies may be exemplified by the case of a child who had a strong tendency to add final “e” to all words; and by the case of another, who was addicted to intrusive consonants, especially “m” and “n.” These idiosyncrasies may doubtless be traced to their source in every case by a patient analysis of the child’s mental contents. The child who added final “e” may, for instance, have been told by a careless teacher “Don’t leave off your ‘e’s’.” The cause of error will be different in every case. It is impossible to generalize about idiosyncrasies.
After all of the foregoing factors have been considered, there still remains the possibility that the failure to learn is due wholly or partially to temperamental traits—instability, indifference, lack of incentive, distaste for intellectual drudgery. English spelling calls largely for rote learning. It can be acquired only by the formation of thousands of specific bonds, arbitrarily prescribed. Its pursuit is almost inevitably tedious. Thus many children will be temperamentally ill adapted to become good spellers.
Failure in spelling, in an intelligent child, may thus result from various kinds of interference with prescribed habit formation. It is apparent that the psychological examination of a poor speller is neither a brief nor a simple task.
The direct examination of the individual should be supplemented by a family history, a development history, and a school history. In some cases special deficiency in spelling seems to be hereditary. Earle has made a study of the inheritance of capacity for spelling, from which he concludes that there is distinct fraternal resemblance in spelling. Stephenson has reported six cases of special inability to read and spell, which occurred in three generations of one family.