Homophonic forms of regularly inflected verbs have their own orthographic representations: A developmental perspective on spelling errors

In previous research (Sandra, Frisson, & Daems, 1999) we demonstrated that experienced writers of Dutch (18-year-olds) make spelling errors on regularly inflected homophonic verb forms. Intrusion errors, i.e., spelling of the homophonic alternative, occurred more often when the low-frequency homophone had to be written. In the present article we report error data for three groups of less experienced spellers, who have not yet fully mastered the rules for verb suffix spelling: 12-year-olds, 13-year-olds, and 14-year-olds. Younger spellers obviously make many more errors than experienced ones. Whereas this is in part due to inadequate rule mastery/application, their error patterns are also clearly influenced by the frequency relationship between the homophonic forms, i.e., the same factor accounting for the errors of experienced spellers. The conclusion of our present and past research is that homophonic forms of regularly inflected verbs have their own orthographic representations in the mental lexicon and that these representations cause interference in writing (spelling errors), whereas they might cause facilitation in reading (a claim made by dual-route models of reading).