Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Double Trouble: How Children And Adults Decide When To Use Double Consonants, Ruth Caputo

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Consonant doubling is a difficult pattern in the English writing system to master because it is inconsistent. In English two-syllable words, consonants are typically doubled after short vowels, a phonological context, but not after any vowel spelled with more than one letter, a graphotactic context. Knowledge about these contexts may help children learn when to use a single or double consonant. Previous theories on spelling development argue that children learn to spell in stages, without learning about phonological or orthographic context until late in the learning process. This study builds on previous research suggesting that children learn spelling patterns through …