Children’s Vowel Spelling in Derived Words: Item-, Word- and Child-Level Predictors

In spelling English words, vowels pose perhaps the greatest difficulty, especially thereduced vowels typically found in unstressed syllables. In morphologically complex words, however, the identity of reduced vowels can often be recovered by considering morphologically-related words. In this brief report, we used item-level analyses to explore predictors of 110 4th and 5th graders’ vowel spelling in derived words (the a and o in majority) as a function of spelling performance on those same vowels in morphologically-related base words (the a and o in major). Variance was partitioned between child and vowel predictors. Significant child predictors were phonemic awareness, prosodic awareness, morphological awareness, and priming by the base word. The significant vowel predictor was syllable stress. Significant interactions were observed between syllable stress and prosodic awareness, and between syllable stress and phonemic awareness. We discuss insights for spelling and reading to be gleaned from linking morphology and prosodic phonology.