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Using an item-specific predictor to test the dimensionality of the orthographic choice task

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Abstract

The orthographic choice (OC) task—requiring individuals to choose the correct spelling between a word and a pseudohomophone foil (e.g., goat vs. gote)—has been used as an outcome measure of orthographic learning and as a predictor of individual differences in word reading development. Some consider the OC task a measure of orthographic knowledge (e.g., Conrad, Harris, & Williams (Reading and Writing, 26(8), 1223–1239, 2013)), whereas others have suggested that the task measures a reader’s familiarity with the word’s orthographic representation and thus measures word reading skill (e.g., Castles & Nation, 2006). We examined this assertion by testing OC task performance of individuals ages 8 to 18 (J = 296) and their ability to read the OC target words (I = 80) in isolation using crossed random effects item-response models. Results reveal that response on the OC task is not fully determined by the ability of an individual to read the target word in isolation. Specifically, the probability of choosing the correct orthographic form when the word was pronounced incorrectly was .79; whereas it was .90 when the word was pronounced correctly. Measures of receptive spelling and phonemic awareness (person-characteristics) and word frequency and orthographic neighborhood size (item-characteristics) accounted for significant variance in orthographic choice after controlling for target item reading and other reading-related abilities. We interpret the results to suggest that the OC task taps both item-specific orthographic knowledge and more general orthographic knowledge.

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Notes

  1. We use the term orthographic knowledge, as opposed to orthographic processing, to emphasize the accumulation of knowledge resulting from orthographic learning (Nation & Castles, 2017).

  2. We acknowledge that our item-specific word-recognition task is not a pure measure of item-specific orthographic knowledge and therefore inferences that any item-level variance in the orthographic choice task not accounted for by this task is attributable to general orthographic knowledge must be conditionalized on this possible mismatch between measure and construct.

  3. We included trigram frequency as a word-level predictor based on work by Siegel, Share, and Geva (1995) indicating children base orthographic decisions in part on the probable sequences and positions of letters that appear within the English corpus. In this study, trigram frequency served as a proxy for sensitivity to probable letter positions, a measure of more general orthographic knowledge.

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Funding

This research was supported in part by Grant P50HD027802 awarded to The University of Colorado and Grant P20HD091013 awarded to Florida State University by Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human (NICHD). The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official view of NICHD.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Florida Center for Reading Research, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL, USA

    Donald L. Compton

  2. Special Education Department, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, USA

    Jennifer K. Gilbert

  3. Department of Educational Psychology, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT, USA

    Devin M. Kearns

  4. Department of Psychology, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO, USA

    Richard K. Olson

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  1. Donald L. Compton
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  2. Jennifer K. Gilbert
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  3. Devin M. Kearns
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  4. Richard K. Olson
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Correspondence to Donald L. Compton.

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Compton, D.L., Gilbert, J.K., Kearns, D.M. et al. Using an item-specific predictor to test the dimensionality of the orthographic choice task. Ann. of Dyslexia 70, 243–258 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11881-020-00202-0

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