Pan Steven C, Rubin Benjamin R, Rickard Timothy C
Department of Psychology, University of California, San Diego.
J Exp Psychol Appl. 2015 Dec;21(4):356-69. doi: 10.1037/xap0000062. Epub 2015 Oct 12.
We examined testing's ability to enhance adult spelling acquisition, relative to copying and reading. Across 3 experiments in which testing with feedback was compared with copying, the spelling improvement after testing matched that following the same amount of time spent copying. A potent testing advantage, however, was observed for spelling words free-recalled. In the fourth experiment, a large testing advantage for both word free recall and spelling was observed, versus reading. Subjects also generally preferred testing and rated it as more effective than copying or reading. The equivalent performance of testing and copying for spelling contrasts with prior work involving children and suggests that retrieval practice may not be the only effective mechanism for spelling skill acquisition. Rather, we suggest that the critical learning event for spelling is focused study on phoneme-to-grapheme mappings for previously unlearned letter sequences. For adults with extensive spelling expertise, focused study is more automatic during both copying and testing with feedback than for individuals with beginning spelling skills. Reading, however, would not be expected to produce efficient focused study of phoneme-to-grapheme mappings, regardless of expertise level. Overall, adult spelling skill acquisition benefits both from testing and copying, and substantially less from reading.
我们考察了相对于抄写和阅读，测试在促进成人拼写习得方面的能力。在3项将有反馈的测试与抄写进行比较的实验中，测试后的拼写进步与花费相同时间抄写后的进步相当。然而，在自由回忆拼写单词方面，观察到了显著的测试优势。在第四个实验中，相对于阅读，在单词自由回忆和拼写方面都观察到了很大的测试优势。受试者通常也更喜欢测试，并认为它比抄写或阅读更有效。测试和抄写在拼写上的等效表现与之前涉及儿童的研究形成对比，这表明检索练习可能不是拼写技能习得的唯一有效机制。相反，我们认为拼写的关键学习事件是对以前未学过的字母序列的音素到字素映射进行集中学习。对于有丰富拼写经验的成年人来说，在抄写和有反馈的测试过程中，集中学习比刚开始拼写的人更自动。然而，无论专业水平如何，阅读都不太可能有效地对音素到字素映射进行集中学习。总体而言，成人拼写技能的习得既受益于测试也受益于抄写，而从阅读中受益则少得多。
