Spelling development in young children: a case of Representational Redescription?

Two experiments explored children’s spelling development in the context of the Representational-Redescription Model (Karmiloff-Smith, 1992). Fifty-one 5-7 year old children (experiment one) and 44 5-6 year olds (experiment two) were assessed, via spelling production and recognition tasks, for phonological to morphological spelling development and representational levels derived from the RR model respectively. Children were allocated to one of the Nunes, Bindman and Bryant’s (1997) stages for spelling production and to one of the representational levels derived from the RR model for spelling recognition and accompanying verbal justifications indicating their knowledge and understanding of spelling. These results are discussed in terms of how the R-R model accounts for the, hitherto unexplained cognitive mechanisms that underlie spelling development and the notion of multi-representation in spelling.