Variability inherent to handwriting has been suggested to help establish more robust letter representations than other methods (e.g., typing). The present study tests whether encoding letter strings from a novel alphabet becomes more resistant to distortion when trained with variable input. Over 5 days, participants learned an 11-character artificial alphabet in a variable handwritten format involving reading, listening and handwriting practice. Another set of 11 artificial characters served as a visual control. Before and after the training, participants completed a masked priming same–different matching task with the novel alphabet letters. The key manipulation was in the primes: the identity/unrelated primes could be presented in a printed or distorted format. Results showed identity priming in both conditions, with a stronger effect for the printed primes. These effects increased post training for experimental and visual control scripts, indicating that exposure to variable input enhances distortion resistance even without explicit training. A second experiment assessed the transposed-letter effect – another marker of orthographic processing – in the novel scripts with an unprimed same–different matching task. Results showed that the transposed-letter effect occurred similarly before and after the training for both scripts. Therefore, letter shape variability when learning to read does not seem to boost orthographic processing.

This study examined the effect of written input on the production of word-final vowels (oral: /i/, /e/; nasal: /ɑ̃/, /ɔ̃/) by 100 native Moroccan learners of French as a second language, relying on a pretest/posttest paradigm. During pretest, participants performed a word repetition task. Then, participants were assigned to five experimental (training) conditions, varying in the modality of stimulus presentation (oral vs. written) and in the modality of response (oral vs. written), before their oral production of the word-final vowels was evaluated in the posttest. Results clearly showed that posttest pronunciation accuracy was affected by the presence of orthographic information in the training task. The copy training task was the most efficient at improving posttest accuracy. Results indicate that orthography, and more specifically the written production copy task, helps L2 learners’ pronunciation more efficiently than phonetic correction.

Several studies have found that, after repeated exposure to new words, children form orthographic representations that allow them to read those words faster and more fluently. However, these studies did not take into account variables related to the words. The aim of this study was to investigate the influence of sublexical variables on the formation of orthographic representations of words by Spanish children. The first experiment used pseudo-words of varying syllabic structure and syllabic frequency. The stimuli for the second experiment were formed with or without context-dependent graphemes. We found that formation of orthographic representations was influenced by syllabic structure (easier for words with simple syllabic structure) and the context-dependency of graphemes (easier in the absence of context-dependent graphemes), but not syllabic frequency. These results indicate that the easier it is to read a word, the easier it is to form an orthographic representation of it.

Twenty normal controls without previous knowledge of French were asked to learn 12 French words that could not be written by Italian correspondence rules. After acquisition of the phonological representations, participants were presented the pictures and asked to write the corresponding words (baseline). They were then presented 3 times with the pictures and the corresponding written words. After a filled delay of 10 min, they were re-presented the pictures and asked to write the corresponding words (testing). A week later, participants were again requested to write the words (follow-up). Number of words correctly written at testing and at follow-up significantly differs from baseline, as well as number of words correctly written at testing and at follow-up. These results are discussed and it is suggested that acquisition of irregular output orthographic representations can be supported by knowledge of orthographic representations for reading and that rehabilitation of patients with damage to output orthographic representations can utilize input orthographic representations. (JINS, 1999, 5, 405–412.)