The role of executive functions and transcription skills in writing: a cross-sectional study across 7 years of schooling

Salas, Naymé; Silvente, Sara

doi:10.1007/s11145-019-09979-y

Cited by 41 publications

(39 citation statements)

References 61 publications

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“…This means that L2 learners require extra support for spelling development beyond phonology (e.g., Bar-Kochva and Hasselhorn, 2017;Bowers and Bowers, 2017), though such training can be similar in nature to training aimed to their L1 peers (e.g., Devonshire and Fluck, 2010;Devonshire et al, 2013;Alves et al, 2018). Without adequate support, however, these children could be at risk of academic failure, in view of the key role that spelling has on writing development (e.g., Juel, 1988;Salas and Silvente, 2019).…”

Section: L1 and L2 Non-phonological Spelling Strategiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Non-phonological Strategies in Spelling Development

Salas

2020

Front. Psychol.

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This paper investigated the role that types of knowledge beyond phonology have on spelling development, such as knowledge of morpheme-to-grapheme mappings, of orthographic patterns, and of word-specific orthographic patterns. It is based on the modern view that children do not learn spelling in discrete stages but, rather, they apply different types of strategies from early on. The goals of the paper were threefold: (1) to determine the relative difficulty of different types of non-phonological spelling strategies, (2) to examine the contribution of non-phonological strategies (specifically, morphological, morphophonological, orthographic, and lexical) to conventional spelling scores, and (3) to determine the role of children's educational level and population type (first-vs. second-language learners) on spelling strategy use. A large sample of 982 children (497 boys), speakers of Catalan (a Romance language similar to Spanish but with a less consistent orthography), participated in the study. They were administered a bespoke dictation task aimed to test their conventional and phonographic accuracy skill, as well as to determine their ability to use different types of non-phonological strategies for the spelling of ambiguous phonemes. Data were analyzed with a series of multigroup, multilevel SEMs. Results showed that (1) children across groups found morphological and lexical strategies harder to apply than orthographic and morphophonological strategies and (2) all types of non-phonological strategies contributed greatly to spelling accuracy scores, even after controlling for children's phonographic skills. Efficient strategy use increased as a function of schooling level, while second-language learners had a worse performance throughout, but no group showed a specific pattern of results. In conclusion, the paper offers substantial evidence that non-phonological strategies are paramount to learning to spell at least during the early and intermediate elementary school years. It is suggested that the teaching of writing should therefore be multidimensional in nature and target particularly the strategies with which children struggle the most: knowledge of morpho-graphemic mappings and word-specific lexical representations. Theoretical implications are also discussed.

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Section: L1 and L2 Non-phonological Spelling Strategiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Non-phonological Strategies in Spelling Development

Salas

2020

Front. Psychol.

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“…Berninger et al, 1992) further divide the translation process into text generation (i.e., the encoding of ideas into words, phrases and sentences) and transcription (i.e., spelling and handwriting skills). The predictions of the not-so-simple view of writing, in which text generation, transcription, oral language and executive function interact to produce text within the constraints of the individual's working memory capacity, have been supported in the literature (e.g., Drijbooms et al, 2015;Olinghouse & Leaird, 2008;Salas & Silvente, 2020).…”

Section: Spelling and Writingmentioning

confidence: 94%

“…The preschool home environment includes many valuable and enjoyable opportunities for learning about literacy, potentially benefitting children's readiness to engage with the literacy curriculum (Niklas & Schneider, 2017) and future literacy development ( de Jong & Leseman, 2001). Critically, the preschool home literacy environment (HLE) encompasses a wide array of experiences with different experiences supporting the development of distinct literacy skills (see Sénéchal et al, 2017 for an overview).…”

Section: The Home Literacy Environment and Readingmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The distinction between indices which reflect text productivity and those which reflect its complexity has been reliably identified and each has been shown to capture variation in children's writing performance (Mackie et al, 2013;Puranik et al, 2008). Moreover, there is evidence indicating differential associations between cognitive skills and writing measured at the word, sentence and text levels (Drijbooms et al, 2015;Salas & Silvente, 2020). This evidence emphasises the need to undertake comprehensive assessments of the writing performance of young children to develop an accurate picture of writing development and the factors which may impact upon its success.…”

Section: Spelling and Writingmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Given the close relationships observed between oral language and cognitive, particularly executive function, skills (Dockrell et al, 2019;Drijbooms et al, 2015;Olinghouse & Leaird, 2008;Salas & Silvente, 2020), we examined the more stringent test of unique associations between HLE and writing; relationships which are independent of these abilities. Previous research has controlled for one of these factors (Hofslungsengen et al, 2018;Puranik et al, 2018), but not both.…”

Section: The Present Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

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Characteristics of the preschool home literacy environment which predict writing skills at school

et al. 2021

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Aspects of the preschool home learning environment which may foster reading development have been identified, although their relationships with spelling and writing remain unclear. The present study explored associations between the preschool home literacy environment (HLE), language and nonverbal abilities and children’s spelling and writing skills measured two years later. A parental questionnaire recorded the reported frequency of pre-schoolers’ code- and meaning-related home literacy experiences, alongside an index of book exposure. One hundred and twenty one children (60 female, Mage = 6:7, SD = 3.67 months) contributed data assessing their transcription skills, indexed by handwriting fluency and word spelling, and translation abilities, indexed by sentence generation and the ability to produce more extended text. Exploratory factor analyses confirmed distinct factors relating to the productivity and complexity of writing samples. Regression analyses revealed that the frequency of preschool code-related, letter-sound interactions explained significant variance in children’s transcription skills at school, independently of earlier language and nonverbal abilities. In contrast, experiences in the preschool HLE were not related to the higher level writing skills of translation and text production. The implications of the findings for our understanding of the cognitive and environmental factors associated with children’s early writing development are discussed.

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Balancing Text Generative and Text Transcriptive Demands: Written Content and Handwriting Legibility and Speed of Children and Youth with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Bos

Houwen

Schoemaker

et al. 2021

J Autism Dev Disord

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The aim of this study was to assess text generation and text transcription of children and youth with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD, n = 67) and Typically Developing (TD) peers (n = 67). Participants (80.6% male, ages 9-14) produced a free-style handwriting task analysed for written content and handwriting legibility and speed. Findings showed children and youth with ASD perform significantly poorer than TD peers for written content and handwriting legibility and speed. For children and youth with ASD, poor handwriting legibility predicted poor written content. For TD peers, fast handwriting predicted good written content. Collapsing both groups, ASD group membership negatively predicted written content, after controlling for handwriting legibility and speed. Practical implementations for the educational context are provided. Keywords ASD • Written content • Handwriting legibility • Handwriting speedAutism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a pervasive neurological disorder characterized by unique communicative and social interactive behaviours, as well as repetitive and rigid patterns of behaviour, interests, or activities (APA, 2010; APA, 2013; ICD-10). Although there is high comorbidity of ASD with intellectual disability (ID), 30-50% of the individuals diagnosed with ASD have intelligence in the normative range (IQ > 70) (Matson and Shoemaker, 2009). Nevertheless, children and youth with ASD with intelligence in the normative range are challenged in different academic areas, including writing (e.g., Keen et al., 2016;Whitby & Mancil, 2009). Writing comprehends text generation and text transcription (Berninger et al., 1999;Zajic & Wilson, 2020). Text generation is the production of linguistic content and is analysed for its written content. Text transcription is the transcription of the written content to symbols that can be read (Berninger, 1999;Zajic & Wilson, 2020), for instance through handwriting. Handwriting is the act of recording words with the hand by means of a writing tool such as a pen or pencil (Rosenblum et al., 2003a) and is generally analysed for handwriting legibility and handwriting speed (Feder & Majnemer, 2007). For children and youth with ASD who are in the developmental phase of establishing functional handwriting that continuous to evolve in a more personalized style (grade 4 to 9), balancing higher-order text generation demands for producing written content as well as lowerorder text transcription demands for producing handwriting of proper legibility and speed is challenging and may affect their academic performance (Palmis et al., 2017;Whitby & Mancil, 2009).

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The role of executive functions and transcription skills in writing: a cross-sectional study across 7 years of schooling

Cited by 41 publications

References 61 publications

Non-phonological Strategies in Spelling Development

Non-phonological Strategies in Spelling Development

Characteristics of the preschool home literacy environment which predict writing skills at school

Balancing Text Generative and Text Transcriptive Demands: Written Content and Handwriting Legibility and Speed of Children and Youth with Autism Spectrum Disorder

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