Influence of transparency and opacity on the spelling of fricative phonemes.
Larissa Paschoal, Lourenço Chacon
PMID 37283397WHAT IT FOUND
First-grade children made far more spelling errors with opaque fricative sounds than transparent ones.
The sound /s/ caused the most mistakes, followed by /z/ and /ʃ/, then /ʒ/. Transparent sounds /f/ and /v/ were spelled correctly most often.
Key findings
01Opaque fricative phonemes accounted for 92.49% of errors, while transparent ones accounted for only 7.51%.
02Among opaque phonemes, /s/ had the highest error count (920 occurrences, 66.71%), significantly differing from all other phonemes.
03Transparent phonemes /f/ and /v/ showed similar error rates (52 and 60 occurrences respectively) with no statistically significant difference.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The study only looked at the syllabic position of simple attack, so it does not tell us about spelling difficulties in other positions. The sample was limited to children with typical development in Brazil, so findings may not apply to children with speech-language disorders or other languages. The analysis was descriptive and inferential regarding error frequency, not an experimental intervention, so it describes the problem but does not test solutions.
Declared interests
Funded by CNPq and CAPES (Brazilian government agencies). No commercial conflicts of interest reported.
The easy way to misread this
Do not assume all opaque sounds are equally difficult to spell. The sound /s/ caused significantly more errors than /ʒ/, /z/, or /ʃ/. Treating all opaque fricatives as a single block of difficulty may lead to inefficient intervention.