Homophone orthography problems form the hard core of spelling difficulties in any language with an alphabetic writing system. For that reason they constitute most interesting material for experiments exploring individual differences in the use of spelling strategies. A total of 253 subjects participated in an experiment with a notoriously difficult homophone problem : the orthography of weak prefix verbs in Dutch. The characteristic difficulty of this category of verbs is that, contrary to the general rule, the present tense singular and past participle have an identical pronunciation (both sounding with final [ t ] ) , whereas in spelling the present tense takes -t and the past participle -d. Weak prefix verbs mutually differ in whether they are more frequent in the -t form (present) or in the -d form (past participle). In a Cloze-type task, subjects were asked to supply endings for these verbs, with relative frequency of the two forms being manipulated. The other factor manipulated was the extent to which the grammatical context was helpful in making it apparent which ending was required. Although the effect of both factors was established, it appeared that the impact of frequency is predominant. No interaction between factors was found. In the discussion the results are evaluated and possible links to research in the Anglo-Saxon language area are indicated. 13 PSY 76

The authors studied sensitivity to semantic priming, as distinct from semantic judgment, in poor readers. Association strength (high vs. low semantic association) was manipulated factorially with semantic association type (categoric vs. thematic association). Participants were 11-year-old poor readers (n = 15) who were matched with a group of chronological-age controls (n = 13), and also matched with a group of reading-age controls (n = 15). Three priming conditions were used: related, unrelated, and neutral prime. Neutral primes consisted of a row of hash marks. Related primes elicited shorter decision latencies than did unrelated primes. Neutral primes elicited the slowest responses in all groups. Poor readers showed an additional delay in the neutral prime condition. No effects of association type (categorical vs. thematic) or association strength (high vs. low) were found, nor were any relationship with reading ability found. The delayed performance of the poor readers on neutral primes is explained in terms of orthographic processing and dependency on grapheme phoneme relationships. The findings are discussed with reference to F. R. Vellutino, D. M. Scanlon, and D. Spearing's (1995) work on semantic processing and reading ability.

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In a large-scale field experiment aimed at improving spelling instruction in Dutch schools, the effectiveness of a newly developed algorithmic teaching method was compared with the conventionally and commonly used analogy approach. More specifically, the experiment was concerned with the most difficult aspect of Dutch orthography: the complex rules of verb orthography. Essential to the algorithmic approach was the development of a spelling algorithm for writing Dutch verbs correctly. The design of this algorithm was inspired mainly by the work of Lancia. Instruction was given over a period of IVi months. On a posttest the algorithmic condition group outperformed the analogy group by 10%. Compared with its performance on the equivalent pretest, the analogy group showed hardly any progress in learning results. The results obtained proved to be stable over time: On a retention test, administered 2Vi months after the posttest, pupils in the algorithmic condition group still performed 8% better. In the discussion the results are evaluated, and suggestions are made for possible application of algorithmization to related problems in the English language area, particularly to the acquisition of grammatical skills.

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