The relationship between prosodic awareness and spelling accuracy in children with autism spectrum disorder

Purpose – Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) often present with difficulties in prosodic awareness and literacy. However, the relationship between these abilities is poorly understood. Nash and Arciuli (2014) identified links between prosodic awareness and reading accuracy in early readers with ASD. The current study sought to extend on these findings by investigating the relationship between prosodic awareness and spelling accuracy in children with ASD. Method –Twenty-five children with ASD (2 females) aged 5-12 years were given a standardised test of word spelling accuracy (WRAT-4; Wilkinson & Robertson, 2006) and two measures of prosodic awareness: the Mispronunciation task (Holliman, Wood, & Sheehy, 2010), a measure of lexical stress awareness; and the Compound Noun task (Whalley & Hansen, 2006), a measure of metrical stress awareness. Participants were also given standardised tests of vocabulary (PPVT-4; Dunn & Dunn, 2007) and phonological awareness (CTOPP-2; Wagner, Torgesen, Rashotte, & Pearson, 2013). Results – A multiple regression analysis showed that age, vocabulary, phonological awareness, and lexical stress awareness were significant predictors of word spelling accuracy. Collectively, these factors accounted for 78% of variance in word spelling ability. Conclusion – These results show that prosody – specifically, awareness of lexical stress – contributes to word spelling accuracy for children with ASD. More broadly, the findings suggest similarities in the spelling profiles of children with ASD and neurotypical children. Pedagogical implications will be discussed.