Development in children's sensitivity to the role of derivations in spelling.

The English orthography represents the units of meaning (morphemes) as well as the units of sound in words. This experiment focused on 6- to 10-year-old children's sensitivity to the role that an understudied group of morphemes, derivations, plays in spelling. We asked children to circle the correct ending out of 3 phonologically plausible options for 2-morpheme words ending in derivations (e.g., lucky) and for 1-morpheme words with the same word-final letter sequence (e.g., study). The older children (approximately 9 years of age) were more likely to complete the endings correctly for derived words than for 1-morpheme words. This effect did not emerge for the younger children (approximately 7 years). These results help to specify the developmental trajectory of children's sensitivity to the role of morphemes in spelling.