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.