| Abstract: | Experience with misspellings can be detrimental to subsequent spelling performance. Generating or being exposed to incorrect spellings between two successive spelling tests interfered with subsequent spelling accuracy of these same words in Experiments 1 and 2 (but not Experiment 3), as indicated by changes from correct to incorrect spellings (CI changes). Furthermore, significantly more CI changes occurred when a recognition test (with incorrect versions as distractors) followed a dictation test than when a second dictation test followed it. Repeatedly presented misspellings were rated as looking progressively more similar to the correct spelling across presentations (Experiment 3). These outcomes suggest that spelling tests that involve the discrimination of correct from incorrect versions may be ill advised. In addition, the instructional technique encouraging students to intentionally produce misspellings of words, for purposes of visual comparison, may be detrimental rather than helpful. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved) |
