Spelling development in young children: a case of Representational Redescription?

Two experiments explored children's spelling development in the context of the representational-redescription (RR) model (A. Karmiloff-Smith, 1992). Fifty-one 5- to 7-year-old children (Experiment 1) and 44 5- to 6-year-old children (Experiment 2) were assessed, using spelling production and recognition tasks, for phonological to morphological spelling development and representational levels derived from the RR model, respectively. Children were allocated to 1 of the stages for spelling production from T. Nunes, M. Bindman, and P. Bryant (1997) and to 1 of the representational levels derived from the RR model for spelling recognition and accompanying verbal justifications indicating their knowledge and understanding of spelling. These results are discussed in terms of how the RR model accounts for the hitherto unexplained cognitive mechanisms that underlie spelling development and the notion of multirepresentation in spelling.