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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Educ.
Sec. Educational Psychology
Volume 9 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/feduc.2024.1383421
This article is part of the Research Topic The important role of the early school years for reading, writing and math development: Assessment and Intervention at school entry View all 11 articles

Language Abilities and Phonological Information Processing Mediate the Association of Spelling with Bilingualism and Socioeconomic Status

Provisionally accepted
Martin Schöfl Martin Schöfl 1,2Christoph Weber Christoph Weber 1,2*Gabriele Steinmair Gabriele Steinmair 2Sabine Zepnik Sabine Zepnik 2Angela Grimm Angela Grimm 3
  • 1 Research Institute for Developmental Medicine, Johannes Kepler University of Linz, Linz, Upper Austria, Austria
  • 2 University of Education Upper Austria, Linz, Upper Austria, Austria
  • 3 Institute for Psycholinguistics and Didactics of the German Language, Faculty of Modern Languages, Goethe University Frankfurt, Frankfurt, Germany

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Research to date has focused on the associations between spelling and (i) its precursors (phonological information processing and language) and (ii) socioeconomic status and bilingualism. Studies have also indicated that bilingualism and parental education are associated with spelling precursors. Whereas these associations have previously been analyzed individually, this study proposes a mediation model in which the effects of socioeconomic status and bilingualism on spelling are mediated by phonological information processing and language skills. For this purpose, we assessed the competencies in spelling precursors of 1012 first graders at the beginning of the first grade, and tested their spelling abilities at the end of the first grade. We then applied a structural equation modeling approach to test the mediation model. In line with the mediation hypothesis, the results show indirect effects of parental education (as a measure of socioeconomic status) on spelling via language and phonological information processing. In addition to mediation we also found a direct effect of SES on spelling performances. For bilingualism, the results support full mediation, more specifically an indirect effect via language only. Notably, we found no effect of bilingual status on phonological information processing.

    Keywords: Schnapp spelling test, bilingualism, First graders, Phonological information processing, Language abilities, Word spelling

    Received: 07 Feb 2024; Accepted: 15 Aug 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Schöfl, Weber, Steinmair, Zepnik and Grimm. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Christoph Weber, Research Institute for Developmental Medicine, Johannes Kepler University of Linz, Linz, 4020, Upper Austria, Austria

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.