One or two lexicons for reading and writing words: Can misspellings shed any light?

Abstract

Words that were consistently misspelled by two young adult English undergraduate students who had difficulties in reading and writing were examined in order to establish whether one or two lexicons are used for reading and writing. The generation of consistent misspellings in the first place is suggestive of a separate device for spelling than for reading words. These students were unable to judge whether their own consistent misspellings were or were not the correct forms of the word, yet their ability to judge the correct forms of these misspellings was similar to that of undergraduates with no reading problems. It was not perfect. It is argued that separate lexicons for reading and for spelling seem to provide a better explanatory framework than a single lexicon used for both reading and spelling known words for these poor readers' patterns of performance. Whether other reader-spellers may also be assumed to have two lexicons cannot be addressed using this method. However, it is not claimed that these two poor reader-spellers need be considered exceptional in terms of their lexical organisation.