Developmental Relations between Reading Ability and Knowledge of Orthographic Structure

First, second, and third grade readers were asked to pick the item that “looked more like a word” from a pair of letter strings. The items to be discriminated differed in terms of a rule-governed description of orthographic structure. Task performance improved with school experience, averaging 58, 69, and 79% correct for first, second, and third grade readers, respectively. More importantly, reading ability, as assessed by vocabulary and comprehension, accounted for 17% more of the variance than that accounted for by grade level. Reading ability is positively correlated with knowledge of orthographic structure for young readers. To what extent this knowledge is responsible for differences in reading ability remains to be determined.