JOURNAL
OF EXPERIMENTAL
CHILD
PSYCHOLOGY
50,
156-178 (1990)
Phonological Awareness and Spelling in Normal Children and
Dyslexics: The Case of Initial Consonant Clusters
MAGGIE
McGill-Montreal
BRUCK
Children’s
Hospital
Learning
Centre
AND
REBECCA
Wayne
TREIMAN
State
University
We investigated phonological awareness and spelling skills among normal readers and spellers in Grades 1 and 2 and among dyslexics who scored at the same
level as the normals on a standardized spelling test. Both normal children and
dyslexics had difficulty with consonants in word-initial clusters in a phoneme
recognition task and a phoneme deletion task. Also, both groups of children had
trouble producing legal spellings of syllables with initial clusters, sometimes
failing to represent the second consonants of the clusters. The dyslexics’ phonological awareness and spelling skills were poorer than those of the younger normal
children, but the two groups showed similar patterns of performance.
8 1990
Academic
Press, Inc.
Phonological awareness is intimately tied to the learning of an alphabetic writing system. Indeed, Stanovich (1987) calls the discovery of this
link one of the all too rare success stories in modem cognitive developmental psychology. However, many questions remain about the nature
of phonological
awareness itself and about the nature of its links to
reading and spelling. For example, although some phonemes in spoken
words seem to be more accessible than others, it is not clear whether
the serial position of the phoneme in the word, the linguistic structure
This research was supported by a National Health and Welfare Scholar Award to
M. Bruck, Grant OGFOOOll8l from the National Sciences and Engineering Research Council to M. Bruck, Grant EQ-4246 from FCAR to M. Bruck, and Grants HD20276 and
HDO0769 from NICHD to R. Treiman. Thanks to Hermina Tabachnek, Alison Kulak,
Cyma Gauze, and Kathleen Capreol for their contributions. Correspondence may be addressed to Dr. Maggie Bruck, McGill-Montreal
Children’s Hospital Learning Centre, 3640
Mountain Avenue, Montreal Quebec H3G 2A8, Canada.
156
0022~0965&O $3.00
Copyright
8 1990 by Academic Press, Inc.
All rights of reproduction
in any form reserved.
PHONOLOGICAL
AWARENESS
AND
SPELLING
157
of the word, or both determine phoneme accessibility. Further, although
phonological awareness has been linked to spelling ability, we do not
yet know whether difficulties in assessing certain phonemes in spoken
words cause specific errors in spelling. Finally, although dyslexics have
poor phonological awareness and spelling skills, the degree to which they
show different patterns of development than normal children remains an
important issue.
The present study focused on a particular aspect of English phonology
that may be problematic for children-the
clusters such as /fl/ and /sp/
that occur at the beginnings of words. Linguists have called these clusters
onsets. Although the clusters contain two phonemes, they function in
some ways as single units (see Treiman, 1988). Thus, even when children
can articulate such clusters, they may have trouble accessing the individual phonemes in phonological awareness tests and representing these
phonemes in spelling. The present study examined older dyslexics’ and
younger normal children’s ability to analyze and to spell cluster onsets.
The Effects of Linguistic Structure on Phonological
Awareness
and Spelling
What determines the accessibility of a phoneme in a spoken word?
Several investigators have suggested that the serial position of the phoneme in the word is critical. For example, a study of 10 different phonological awareness tasks led Stanovich, Cunningham, and Cramer (1984)
to conclude that performance was better when the critical sound was at
the beginning of the word than at the end of the word. Bruce (1964)
reported that the middle phonemes of words were harder to delete than
either the initial or final phonemes.
However, the position of the phoneme within a spoken word is often
confounded with the word’s linguistic structure. As discussed by Treiman
(1988), spoken syllables seem to contain two major units-an
onset (the
initial consonant or consonant cluster) and a rime (the vowel and any
following consonants). In this context, the finding that word-initial phonemes are often easier to access than word-final phonemes may reflect
the use of CVC (consonant-vowel-consonant)
stimuli in many studies.
The initial C of a CVC syllable is a unit on its own-an onset-while
the final C is part of a larger unit-the
rime.
Several studies have suggested that the linguistic status of a phoneme
has effects on accessibility above and beyond those of serial position.
For example, Treiman (1985a, Experiment
2) found that children had
more difficulty recognizing a target like /s/ when it was the first consonant of a CCV syllable like /sna/ than when it was the first consonant
of a CVC syllable like /San/, even though the phoneme’s position in the
stimulus was the same in both cases. (See the Appendix for a key to
the phonemic symbols.) In a second study (Treiman, in press), children
158
BRUCK
AND
TREIMAN
had more trouble recognizing the second consonant of a cluster onset
(e.g., the /n/ of /sni/) than a syllable-initial
single consonant (e.g., the
/n/ of /ani/), even though the consonant was the second phoneme of
the stimulus in both cases. Thus, consonants in cluster onsets are apparently harder to recognize than consonants that are onsets on their
own.
Similar effects of linguistic structure emerge in other phonological
awareness tasks. For example, French-speaking
normal readers in first
and second grades have less trouble deleting initial consonants when the
consonant is an onset on its own than when the consonant belongs to
a CC onset (Morais, Cluytens, & Alegria, 1984). Another study suggests
that children tend to underestimate the number of phonemes in syllables
containing clusters, although no distinction was made between initial and
final clusters in this case (Marcel, 1980). Linguistic structure is also
influential in the oddity task, in which children judge which of several
spoken words does not contain a sound or sounds that the others share
(Kirtley, Bryant, Maclean, & Bradley, 1989), in the phoneme manipulations task (Treiman, 1985a, Experiment I), and in the word pair comparison task (Treiman & Zukowski, in press).
Just as children have difficulty analyzing onset clusters in spoken
words, so they have difficulty representing such clusters in spelling.
Normal beginning spellers sometimes omit the second (and third) consonants of onset clusters. Treiman (1985b) examined the spontaneous
writings of first graders whose teacher encouraged writing and did not
stress correct spelling. Pooling data collected throughout the school year,
children failed to spell the second and third consonants of onset clusters
over 20% of the time. For example, they spelled blow as bo, tree as te,
street as set and sret, and haystack as has&. Miller and Limber (1985)
asked kindergartners to invent spellings for CCVC nonwords. Children
omitted the second phonemes of the onsets over one-third of the time,
but hardly ever omitted the first phonemes. Finally, Barton, Miller, and
Macken (1980) had 4-year-olds use colored blocks to symbolize the initial
sounds of syllables beginning with single consonants and with /SW/ and
/tr/ clusters. A child who had used a certain colored block for the first
sound of seat and a different colored block for the first sound of wheat
sometimes chose a block of yet a third color to represent the first part
of sweet. When a child did use one or both of the same blocks, he or
she most often represented the beginning of sweet with a single block,
the one that had previously symbolized /s/. It was less common for
children to use just the /w/ block or to use both the /s/ and /w/ blocks.
Our research further examined the effects of linguistic structure on
phonological awareness and spelling. Instead of using a single phonological awareness task, as in many earlier studies, we used two different
tasks-phoneme
recognition and phoneme deletion. Based on previous
PHONOLOGICAL
AWARENESS
AND
SPELLING
159
findings, we expected that children would find it harder to access a
phoneme when that phoneme was part of a cluster onset than when it
was an onset on its own. We also asked whether children have more
difficulty spelling words and nonwords with CC onsets than those with
C onsets, and whether they sometimes fail to spell the phonemes in CC
clusters.
The Relationship between Phonological
Awareness and Spelling
If phonological awareness plays an important role in the acquisition
of an alphabetic writing system, we would expect a close relationship
between phonological
awareness and spelling. Most previous studies
(e.g., Juel, Griffith, & Gough, 1986; Tomeus, 1984) have examined this
issue globally, using general measures of phonological
awareness and
general measures of spelling. But more specific relationships should also
exist, with particular difficulties in phonological
awareness producing
corresponding errors in spelling. Our study examined such links for the
case of onset clusters.
The Spelling and Phonological
Awareness of Dyslexic Children
How do the spelling and phonological
awareness skills of dyslexic
children compare with those of normal children? Although the diagnosis
of dyslexia is primarily based on reading disorders, dyslexics also have
severe spelling deficits relative to same-aged normal children. Dyslexics’
spelling errors are often poor representations of the phonological forms
of the spoken words (e.g., Boder, 1973; Finucci, Isaacs, Whitehouse, &
Childs, 1983). Errors such as beever for believe or refer for rough (from
Boder, 1973) have been called nonphonetic. Dyslexics also do poorly in
phonological awareness tests (e.g., Bradley & Bryant, 1978; Bruck, 1989;
Morais et al., 1984). It is thought that dyslexics’ low levels of phonological awareness underlie their reading and spelling problems, but there is
as yet no well-specified account of the nature of this relationship.
A central issue in the field of dyslexia is whether dyslexics’ poor
performance on various tasks relative to same-aged normal children reflects delayed development
or whether it reflects a deficit in certain
underlying skills that are essential for literacy. The primary approach
that has been used to address the delay versus deficit issue is called the
“level match comparison” (Backman, Mamen, & Ferguson, 1984; Bryant
& Goswami, 1986). We may illustrate the use of this comparison with
reference to phonological awareness. According to the developmental
delay position, dyslexics do poorly on phonological awareness tests because of their low levels of literacy. If so, dyslexics’ performance on
phonological
awareness tasks should be indistinguishable
from that of
younger normal children matched to the dyslexics on literacy levels.
168
BRUCK
AND
TREIMAN
phoneme, and most difficulty deleting just the first phoneme. Finally,
block and modality interacted [by subjects: F(2, 108) = 4.32, p < .025;
by stimuli: F(2, 42) = 5.57, p < .Ol]. Children had more difficulty in
the visual than the auditory task in Block 1 only.
In sum, deletion of an entire cluster onset is a relatively natural task
for children. However, when children must drop a single phoneme from
a cluster, it is easier to delete only the second phoneme than only the
first. Analyses of children’s errors on syllables with cluster onsets confirmed these patterns. When one phoneme of a cluster was to be deleted
(Blocks 1 and 2), a large percentage of errors (92% of all errors in Block
1 and 46% in Block 2, pooling across dyslexics and normals and across
visual and auditory deletion) reflected the erroneous deletion of the entire
onset. This finding supports the notion that children tend to treat the
onset as a unit. When children were to drop the whole onset (Block 3),
29% of all errors involved the incorrect removal of the second phoneme
of the onset while only 4% involved the incorrect removal of the first
phoneme. This difference confirms that it is more natural to delete the
second phoneme of a cluster onset than the first.
Given the poor performance of even normal second graders in some
conditions of the auditory and visual deletion tasks, 17 third graders,
selected so as to score at least at grade level on both the reading and
spelling subtests of the WRAT-R, were run in the same tasks. Their
average grade level on both subtests was beginning Grade 4. Collapsing
across modalities, the mean error rate for the third graders on the CCVs
of Block 1 was JO, not significantly different than the mean error rate
of .63 for the second graders. Thus, the difficulty in deleting the initial
consonants of cluster onsets persists into third grade. The mean error
rate for the third graders on the CVCs of Block 1 was .03, not significantly
different than the .02 for second graders.
Reliable improvement
was shown from Grade 2 to Grade 3 on Block
2, both on CCVs and VCVs [by subjects: F(1, 31) = 6.14, p < .025; by
stimuli: F(1, 28) = 85.69, p < .OOl]. The mean proportion of errors for
third graders was .08 on CCVs and .22 on VCVs, as compared to .21
and .38, respectively, for second graders. Thus, children do improve
across the age range tested in deleting the second consonants of onset
clusters. As our previous analyses show, this task is easier than first
consonant deletion.
There were no grade-related effects in the analyses of the Block 3
data, presumably because both the second and third graders made few
errors in this block.
Word and Nonword Spelling Tasks
The word and nonword spelling data were analyzed in two main waysin terms of legal versus illegal spellings and in terms of consonant omis-
PHONOLOGICAL
AWARENESS
AND
SPELLING
161
standard spelling tests? Do the dyslexics make more nonphonetic errors
than the normals? Research to date does not provide clear answers to
these questions. Among studies using a spelling-level match comparison,
Nelson (1980) and Moats (1983) found similar patterns of phonologically
based errors in dyslexics and normals. Bruck (1988) reported that dyslexics and normals did not differ significantly in their ability to spell
various types of words and nonwords, but that dyslexics’ errors were
more likely to be nonphonetic. Several other investigators used a readinglevel match comparison rather than a spelling-level match comparison,
leaving open the possibility that the dyslexics’ spelling level was lower
than the normals’. Again, the results are mixed. Some studies (Carpenter,
1983; Carpenter & Miller, 1982) reported similar spelling profiles while
others (Olson, 1985; Siegel & Ryan, 1988) found that dyslexics have
poorer phonological spelling skills than younger normal children.
The present study examined both spelling and phonological awareness
among a group of dyslexics and a group of spelling-level matched normals, focusing specifically on onset clusters. Our study is the first to
consider both spelling and phonological awareness using a spelling-level
match comparison.
METHOD
Subjects
Fifty-six children participated in this study: 17 first graders (10 male,
7 female), 16 second graders (6 male, 10 female), and 23 dyslexics (19
male, 4 female). The first and second graders attended a suburban elementary school. The first graders were tested in February and March
while the second graders were tested in October and November. The
first and second graders were selected on the basis of successful completion of an articulation screening pretest (described later in this section)
and at least average grade level scores on both the reading and spelling
subtests of the Wide Range Achievement Test-Revised (WRAT-R; Jastak
& Wilkinson,
1984). The dyslexics were selected from the patient population of a clinic that specializes in the assessment of reading disabilities.
Dyslexics were included if they successfully completed the articulation
pretest and scored at or below the 32nd percentile for their age on the
reading and spelling subtests of the WRAT-R. The dyslexics’ mean full
scale score on the WISC-R (Wechsler, 1974) was 104. Their verbal and
performance scale scores were 99 and 109, respectively. (For a few
subjects for whom WISC-R scores were not available, other IQ tests
were used.) Table 1 shows the mean ages and WRAT-R scores for each
group.
General Procedures
All subjects took the same battery of tests, including an articulation
screening pretest and five experimental tasks-auditory
recognition, au-
162
BRUCK AND TREIMAN
TABLE
BACKGROUND
DATA
Group
ON FIRST-GRADE,
7 years, 2 months
61-W
Grade 2
7 years, 8 months
(7,1-894)
Dyslexic
Note.
10 years, 2 months
(7,9-12,7)
AND
DYSLEXIC
SUBJIXTS
WRAT spelling
grade equivalent
WRAT reading
grade equivalent
Beginning Grade 2
(middle l-end 2)
Middle Grade 2
(middle 2-beginning 3)
Beginning Grade 2
(pre l-beginning 5
Beginning Grade 2
(middle l-end 2)
End Grade 2
(middle 2-end 3)
Middle Grade 2
(beginning l-end 4)
Age
Grade 1
1
SECONDGRADE,
Ranges are shown in parentheses.
ditory deletion, visual deletion, word spelling, and nonword spelling. For
auditory recognition and auditory deletion, a Sony TCM-19V tape recorder was used for presentation of stimuli. Both the subject and the
experimenter wore Sennheiser HD-410 headphones.
The order of presentation of the experimental
tasks was counterbalanced across subjects in each group with the constraint that the visual
and auditory deletion tasks were not given on the same day. First and
second graders completed the tasks in three sessions of about l/2 hr each;
dyslexics were seen in two sessions of about 1 hr each.
The stimuli for the experimental tasks for CCV, CVC, and VCV words
and nonwords. For all VCV stimuli, the first vowel was unstressed /a/
and the second vowel was stressed. According to most linguistic theories
of syllabification,
the consonant is the onset of the second syllable;
Treiman and Danis (1988) confirmed that adults generally syllabify such
VCVs in this manner. The stimuli for each task appear in the Appendix.
Articulation Screening Pretest
To ensure that each child could correctly pronounce the phonemes in
the experimental
stimuli and articulate cluster onsets, an articulation
screening pretest was developed. The child was asked to repeat each of
16 different words after the experimenter. These words contained all the
critical phonemes and cluster onsets that appeared in the experimental
stimuli. If the child incorrectly repeated a word, the experimenter said
it again and asked the child to do the same. All children successfully
pronounced all the words, and thus no screened subject was excluded
from the study.
Auditory Recognition Task
The auditory recognition task contained
stimuli
were
24 nonwords
presented
two blocks. For Block 1, the
in two
groups
of 12 each.
each group, there were six CCV and six CVC nonwords.
Within
The child
PHONOLOGICAL
AWARENESS
AND
SPELLING
163
indicated whether the initial phoneme of each nonword corresponded to
a prespecified target. The target was the same for each trial in a group
of stimuli but differed across groups. The target was /s/ in Group 1 and
/f/ in Group 2. Each group contained eight positive trials (four CCV
and four CVC) and four negative trials.
Block 2 contained two groups of 12 nonwords each, with six CCV
and six VCV nonwords in each group. The child judged whether the
second phoneme of each nonword matched a target. The target was /I/
for Group 1 and /r/ for Group 2. Each group of stimuli included eight
positive trials (four CCV and four VCV) and four negative trials.
The order of presentation of the two groups of stimuli in each block
was counterbalanced across subjects in each group-first
grade, second
grade, and dyslexic. Each group of stimuli was preceded by two demonstration and four practice trials in which feedback was given until the
task was understood. The demonstration and practice trials used different
targets than the experimental
trials. All except the two demonstration
trials were presented on audiotape. For Block 1, the instructions were,
“I am going to tell you a sound like /s/ and then say a pretend word.
I want you to say the pretend word and then tell me if you hear the /s/
sound at the beginning of it. Instructions for Block 2 were, “I am going
to ask you to listen for a sound, but not a sound at the beginning of the
word like last time. I want you to listen and tell me whether you hear
the sound anywhere in the pretend word.” For both blocks, the child
was asked to repeat each nonword; if the child repeated it incorrectly
he or she was corrected and was asked to say it again. Block 1 always
preceded Block 2.
Auditory Deletion
Task
This task included three blocks of 16 trials each. Block 1 contained
eight CCV and eight CVC nonwords, which were identical to the positive
trials of Block 1 of the auditory recognition task. The child was to delete
the first sound of each nonword and say the resulting nonword. Block
2 included eight CCV and eight VCV items. These were the positive
items of Block 2 of the auditory recognition task. Here, the child was
to delete the second sound and say the resulting nonword. Block 3
included 16 new items, eight CCVCs and eight CVCs. For Block 3, the
experimenter pronounced the sound or sounds that the child was to delete
in each case. These were the initial CC (onset) of the CCVC items and
the initial C (onset) of the CVC items. The child attempted to say the
resulting nonword.
Each block was preceded by two demonstration
and four practice
trials. These involved different phonemes than the test trials. As with
the recognition task, feedback was given until the child understood the
task. For all trials-demonstration,
practice, and test-the child repeated
164
BRUCK AND TREIMAN
the nonword before responding and corrections were made as necessary.
All trials except the two demonstrations were on audiotape. Instructions
for Block 1 were, “I am going to say a pretend word, and I want you
to take away the first sound from that word and tell me what new word
we have.” For Block 2, the instructions were, “This time I want you
to tell me what new word we have when you take off the second sound
in the pretend word. ” For Block 3, the instructions were, “This time I
am going to tell you the sounds that I want you to take off the next
words so that we can make some new words.” The blocks were presented
in the order 1, 2, 3.
Visual Deletion Task
The test stimuli for the visual deletion task were the same as those
for the auditory deletion task, as were the demonstration
and practice
items.
The trials for the visual deletion task were not on audiotape. The
experimenter said each nonword and placed in front of the child a different colored block for each sound. The experimenter then removed
the block corresponding to the phoneme that was to be deleted-the
first
block for Block 1, the second block for Block 2, and either the first or
the first and second blocks for Block 3-and asked the child to say the
resulting nonword. Instructions for Block 1 were, “I am going to say a
pretend word and put out one block for each sound in that word. Then
I am going to take away a block and I want you to tell me what new
word we have when that sound is gone.” For Block 2, the instructions
were, “This time I will take away the second block from the pretend
word” and for Block 3, “This time I am going to take away one or two
blocks. Your job is still the same; I want you to tell me what new word
we have when those sounds are taken away.”
Word Spelling Task
This task included 10 words with the phonemic form CCV and 10
words with the phonemic form CVC. The words were constructed in
pairs such that the CCV and CVC words in each pair contained many
of the same phonemes and were spelled with many of the same letters.
The two types of words were close in frequency (mean frequencies from
Carroll, Davies, and Richman [ 19711 319 for CCVs and 324 for CVCs).
VCVs were not used because few English VCVs fit the constraints.
The experimenter read each word in isolation, read it again in a sentence, and then repeated the word. The child repeated the word (with
corrections as necessary) and then spelled it.
Nonword Spelling Task
There were 10 triplets of stimuli, each containing a CCV, a CVC, and
a VCV. Usually, the CCV and CVC stimuli in each triplet contained the
PHONOLOGICAL
AWARENESS
16.5
AND SPELLING
same phonemes and the VCV contained the same second C and final V
as the CCV. Some exceptions were necessary to avoid repetition of
stimuli and to avoid real words.
Each nonword was repeated three times by the experimenter and once
by the child (with corrections if needed) before the child spelled it.
RESULTS
The first and second graders in this study were close in age and performed similarly on the spelling subtest of the WRAT-R, in part because
the first graders were tested during the second half of the school year
while the second graders were tested during the first half. Preliminary
analyses showed that these two groups also performed similarly on the
experimental
measures. Therefore, we will present the pooled data for
the first and second graders-the
“normal”
group-and
compare their
results with the results of the dyslexics. The dyslexics’ mean score on
the WRAT-R spelling subtest was very close to that of the normal subjects; the two values were statistically indistinguishable
by a t test. Thus,
we have a spelling-level match comparison, where the dyslexics, although
2 years and 9 months older than the normal group, performed very
similarly on the standardized spelling test. The dyslexics and normals
were also statistically indistinguishable
in their WRAT-R reading scores.
The data were analyzed using analyses of variance across subjects and
across stimuli, followed up with t tests. Only those effects that were
significant (p < .05) in both analyses by subjects and analyses by stimuli
will be reported.
Auditory Recognition Task
Table 2 shows the mean proportions of errors on the various types of
stimuli in the auditory recognition task. In Block 1, it will be recalled,
children were asked to recognize an initial consonant in CCV and CVC
syllables. The data for positive items were analyzed using the factors of
group (dyslexic vs. normal) and structure (CCV vs. CVC). There was
an effect of structure [by subjects: F(1, 54) = 6.11, p < .02.5; by stimuli:
TABLE
MEAN
PROFQRTION
2
OF ERRORS ON AUDITORY
Positive items
RECOGNITION
TASK
Negative items
Block 1
Dyslexic
Normal
ccv
.08
.02
cvc
.04
.Ol
.Ol
.02
Block 2
Dyslexic
Normal
ccv
.15
.07
vcv
.04
.04
.06
.03
166
BRUCK
AND
TREIMAN
F(1, 14) = 9.67, p < .Ol] but no effect of group and no interaction.
Although children performed well overall, they had significantly more
trouble recognizing the initial consonant of a CCV than a CVC. That is,
children more often failed to recognize the initial consonant of an onset
cluster than a singleton initial consonant. Both groups of children made
few false positive errors; the two groups did not differ significantly in
this regard.
In Block 2, children were asked to recognize the second consonants
in CCVs and VCVs. For positive items, there was an effect of structure
[by subjects: F(1, 54) = 10.38, p < .005; by stimuli: F(1, 14) = 6.34,
p < .025] and an interaction between group and structure [by subjects:
F(1, 54) = 4.39; by stimuli: F(1, 14) = 4.46; p < .05 for both]. The
interaction was obtained because dyslexics performed worse than normals on the CCV items only [t(54) = 2.53, p < .Ol]. There were few
errors on negative items; the two groups did not differ significantly on
these items.
Further analyses revealed that children made significantly more errors
on the CCV stimuli of Block 2, for which the target was the second
phoneme of an onset cluster, than on the CCV stimuli of Block 1, for
which the target was the first phoneme of an onset cluster [by subjects:
F(1, 54) = 4.04; by stimuli: F(1, 14) = 4.62, p < .05 for both]. Also,
pooling across CCV items, dyslexics performed worse than normals [by
subjects: F(1, 54) = 6.62, p < .Ol; by stimuli: F(1, 14) = 19.33, p <
.OOl]. The difference between dyslexics and normals was also significant
when scores for all positive and negative items on Blocks 1 and 2 were
pooled [by subjects: t(54) = 2.40, p < .025; by stimuli: t(47) = 4.27,
p < .OOl; both tests two-tailed].
Auditory
and Visual Deletion
Tasks
Table 3 shows the results for the auditory and visual deletion tasks.
Consider, first, the results for Block I, which involved deletion of the
first consonants of CCV and CVC nonwords. The data were analyzed
using the variables of group (dyslexic vs. normal), structure (CCV vs.
CVC), and modality (auditory vs. visual). There was a main effect of
group [by subjects: F(1, 54) = 9.45, p < .005; by stimuli: F(1, 28) =
82.30, p < .OOl], with dyslexics performing worse than normals. There
was also a main effect of structure [by subjects: F(1, 54) = 312.80; by
stimuli: F(1, 28) = 1939.54, p < .OOl for both]. This effect arose because
children had a great difficulty deleting just the first consonant of a CCV,
erring on over half the trials. Finally, structure and modality interacted
[by subjects: F(1, 54) = 5.24, p < .05; by stimuli: F(1, 28) = 14.62,
p < .OOl I. This interaction was obtained because CCVs were particularly
hard in the visual task.
In Block 2, children were to delete the second phonemes of CCVs
PHONOLOGICAL
AWARENESS
TABLE
MEAN
PROPORTION
OF ERRORS
167
AND SPELLING
3
ON AUDITORY
Auditory deletion
AND
VISUAL
DELETION
TASKS
Visual deletion
Block 1
Dyslexic
Normal
ccv
.80
.62
cvc
.12
.03
ccv
.88
.73
cvc
.07
.03
Block 2
Dyslexic
Normal
ccv
.59
.28
vcv
.57
.41
ccv
.53
.29
vcv
.65
.49
Block 3
Dyslexic
Normal
ccvc
.19
.08
cvc
.13
.05
ccvc
.12
.06
cvc
.09
.04
and VCVs. Dyslexics performed worse than normals [by subjects: F( 1,
54) = 7.42, p < .Ol; by stimuli: F(1, 28) = 164.64; p < .OOl]. The effect
of structure was also significant, with VCVs being harder than CCVs
[by subjects: F(1, 54) = 10.65, p < .005; by stimuli: F(1, 28) = 19.10,
p < .OOl]. Children probably have trouble deleting the second sound of
a nonword like /alai/ because the resulting two-syllable item, /a-oi/, is
nonEnglish-like
and hard to pronounce.
In Block 3, children were to delete the entire onsets of CCVC and
CVC syllables. There was a main effect of structure, with children doing
worse on CCVCs than on CVCs [by subjects: F(1, 54) = 9.66, p < 305;
by stimuli: F(1,28) = 4.49, p < .05]. Even on CCVCs, however, children
performed relatively well.
When scores on all items in Blocks 1, 2, and 3 were pooled, dyslexics
performed significantly worse than normals [by subjects: t(54) = 3.27,
p < .005; by stimuli: t(95) = 12.14, p < JOI; both tests two-tailed], as
the results presented above imply.
Because stimuli with cluster onsets occurred in three different blocks,
each block with a different task, we may compare children’s performance
on these stimuli across blocks. In Block 1 children deleted just the initial
consonant of the cluster, in Block 2 they deleted just the second consonant of the cluster, and in Block 3 they deleted both consonants. As
expected from the previous analyses, there was a main effect of group
[by subjects: F(1, 54) = 13.91; by stimuli: F(1, 42) = 194.46; p < .OOl
for both], with dyslexics doing worse than normals. In addition, there
was a main effect of block [by subjects: F(2, 108) = 116.83; by stimuli:
F(2,42) = 411.29; p < .OOl for both]. Post hoc tests showed that children
did best in Block 3, intermediate in Block 2, and poorest on Block 1
[for Block 3 vs. Block 2: t(lO8) = 4.07; for Block 2 vs. Block 1: t(108)
= 4.24; p < .OOl for both]. Thus, children have relatively little trouble
deleting an entire cluster onset, more trouble deleting just the second
168
BRUCK
AND
TREIMAN
phoneme, and most difficulty deleting just the first phoneme. Finally,
block and modality interacted [by subjects: F(2, 108) = 4.32, p < .025;
by stimuli: F(2, 42) = 5.57, p < .Ol]. Children had more difficulty in
the visual than the auditory task in Block 1 only.
In sum, deletion of an entire cluster onset is a relatively natural task
for children. However, when children must drop a single phoneme from
a cluster, it is easier to delete only the second phoneme than only the
first. Analyses of children’s errors on syllables with cluster onsets confirmed these patterns. When one phoneme of a cluster was to be deleted
(Blocks 1 and 2), a large percentage of errors (92% of all errors in Block
1 and 46% in Block 2, pooling across dyslexics and normals and across
visual and auditory deletion) reflected the erroneous deletion of the entire
onset. This finding supports the notion that children tend to treat the
onset as a unit. When children were to drop the whole onset (Block 3),
29% of all errors involved the incorrect removal of the second phoneme
of the onset while only 4% involved the incorrect removal of the first
phoneme. This difference confirms that it is more natural to delete the
second phoneme of a cluster onset than the first.
Given the poor performance of even normal second graders in some
conditions of the auditory and visual deletion tasks, 17 third graders,
selected so as to score at least at grade level on both the reading and
spelling subtests of the WRAT-R, were run in the same tasks. Their
average grade level on both subtests was beginning Grade 4. Collapsing
across modalities, the mean error rate for the third graders on the CCVs
of Block 1 was JO, not significantly different than the mean error rate
of .63 for the second graders. Thus, the difficulty in deleting the initial
consonants of cluster onsets persists into third grade. The mean error
rate for the third graders on the CVCs of Block 1 was .03, not significantly
different than the .02 for second graders.
Reliable improvement
was shown from Grade 2 to Grade 3 on Block
2, both on CCVs and VCVs [by subjects: F(1, 31) = 6.14, p < .025; by
stimuli: F(1, 28) = 85.69, p < .OOl]. The mean proportion of errors for
third graders was .08 on CCVs and .22 on VCVs, as compared to .21
and .38, respectively, for second graders. Thus, children do improve
across the age range tested in deleting the second consonants of onset
clusters. As our previous analyses show, this task is easier than first
consonant deletion.
There were no grade-related effects in the analyses of the Block 3
data, presumably because both the second and third graders made few
errors in this block.
Word and Nonword Spelling Tasks
The word and nonword spelling data were analyzed in two main waysin terms of legal versus illegal spellings and in terms of consonant omis-
PHONOLOGICAL
AWARENESS
AND
169
SPELLING
sions. For a spelling to be scored as legal, the child had to spell each
phoneme with a letter or letters that represent the phoneme in some real
English word and had to indicate the phonemes in the correct order.
The system of Hanna, Hanna, Hodges, and Rudorf (1966) was used to
help classify spellings as legal or illegal. For example, the spelling of
/bli/ as ble is legal because e is used for /i/ in words like he. Blee,
blea, and bly are also legal spellings of /bli/ (cf. meet, heap, city). For
the real word /bol/, bol and boa1 are legal spellings, even though they
are not the standard bowl. A consonant was considered to be omitted
if the spelling did not include, in any position, a legal spelling of the
phoneme. For example, be and bea for /bli/ omit the second consonant,
/l/. Such spellings are, of course, illegal.
For the word spelling task only, children’s spellings could also be
scored as correct or incorrect. The overall proportion of incorrect spellings of words was .74 for first graders, .47 for second graders, and .69
for dyslexics. Here, unlike in the other analyses, there was a significant
difference between first and second graders. The dyslexics’ performance
was statistically indistinguishable
from that of the first graders by a t
test. For the main variables of illegal spellings and consonant omissions,
however, first and second graders performed comparably on both words
and nonwords. Thus, the first and second grade data were pooled in the
following analyses.
Table 4 shows the proportions of illegal spellings for words and nonwords. To examine the word and nonword data together, analyses were
carried out with the factors of group (dyslexic vs. normal), structure
(CCV vs. CVC), and lexicality (word vs. nonword). There were effects
of group [by subjects: F(1, 54) = 12.35; by stimuli: F(1, 18) = 88.46;
p < .OOl for both] and structure [by subjects: F(1, 54) = 7.49, p < .Ol;
by stimuli: F(1, 18) = 7.67, p < .025]. Dyslexics produced more illegal
spellings than normals; both groups had more difficulty with CCVs than
cvcs.
Further analyses examined the nonword data only, allowing the results
for VCVs to be included. The factors were group (dyslexic vs. normal)
and structure (CCV, CVC, VCV). Here, only the effect of group was
reliable [by subjects: F(1, 54) = 10.87, p < .005; by stimuli: F( 1, 9) =
MEAN
PROPORTION
OF ILLEGAL
TABLE
4
SPELLINGS IN WORD AND NONWORD
Words
ccv
Dyslexic
Nonnal
.39
.26
SPELLING
TASKS
Nonwords
cvc
.30
.16
ccv
.43
.23
cvc
.33
.21
vcv
.36
.20
170
BRUCK
AND
TREIMAN
31.92, p < .OOl]. Although the effect of structure was not significant,
VCVs appeared to be more similar to CVCs than to CCVs. The difference
between VCVs and CCVs was significant in a t test by subjects (p
< .05) but was not significant by stimuli.
Generally, children produced fewer legal spellings of CCVs than of
CVCs. To determine whether some of the illegal spellings of CCVs
involved consonant omissions, we calculated the proportion of spellings
that omitted each consonant. The data are shown in Table 5.
The omission data were analyzed using the factors of group (dyslexic
vs. normal), structure (CCV vs. CVC), position (first vs. second consonant of syllable), and lexicality (word vs. nonword). There were significant effects of group [by subjects: F(1, 54) = 9.58, p < .005; by
stimuli: F(1, 18) = 21.82, p < .OOl], structure [by subjects: F(1, 54) =
10.44; by stimuli: F(1, 18) = 10.39; p < .005 for both], and position [by
subjects: F(1, 54) = 17.02; by stimuli: F(1, 18) = 37.80; p < .OOl for
both], as well as an interaction between structure and position [by subjects: F(1, 54) = 11.33, p < .OOl; by stimuli: F(1, 18) = 8.23, p < .Ol].
As Table 5 shows, dyslexics made more omissions than normals. Also,
there were more consonant omissions for CCVs than CVCs and more
omissions for the second consonants of syllables than for the first consonants. The interaction between syllable structure and consonant position arose because children were especially prone to omit the second
consonants of CCVs.
For nonwords, we can compare omissions of the consonants in VCVs
with omissions of the second consonants in CCVs. This comparison
equates for the serial position of the consonant in the stimulus. Analyses
using the factors of group (dyslexic vs. normal) and structure (CCV vs.
VCV) showed main effects of group [by subjects: F(1, 54) = 5.55, p <
.025; by stimuli: F(1, 9) = 21.74, p < .OOl] and structure [by subjects:
F(1, 54) = 24.25, p < .OOl; by stimuli: F(1, 9) = 13.04, p -C .Oll, as
well as an interaction between group and structure [by subjects: F(1,
54) = 6.44, p < .025; by stimuli: F(1, 9) = 16.99, p < .005]. Overall,
dyslexics made more omissions than normals and consonants were more
MEAN
PROPORTION
TABLE
5
OF UNDERLINED CONSONANT
SPELLING TASKS
OF OMIWONS
Nonwords
Words
ccv
ccv
Dyslexics
Nonnals
.03
.03
cvc
cp
.14
.06
IN WORD AND NONWORD
cvc
.04
.03
ccv
cvg
.07
.Ol
gTv
.04
.oo
cvc
ccv
.16
.05
pc
.03
.Ol
cvc
.06
.04
vcv
vg
34
.02
PHONOLOGICAL
AWARENESS
AND
SPELLING
171
likely to be omitted when in the second position of a CCV than in the
second position of a VCV. The difficulty on CCVs relative to VCVs was
most pronounced for dyslexics.
Relationship
between Petiormance
on Phonological
Tasks and Spelling
In the auditory recognition task, children had most difficulty detecting
the second consonant of a CCV. Similarly, the second consonant of a
CCV had the highest omission rate in spelling. The error rates for the
second consonants of CCVs were similar in auditory recognition and in
spelling: .15 for dyslexics and .07 for normals in auditory recognition;
.15 for dyslexics and .06 for normals in spelling, pooling over words and
nonwords. To determine whether individual children showed similar patterns of performance in the two tasks, we correlated auditory recognition
error scores with rates of second consonant omission in spelling, pooling
over words and nonwords. Omission rates correlated significantly with
performance on the second consonants of CCVs in the auditory recognition test (r = .30, p < .025, one-tailed) but not with performance on
the first consonants of CCVs (r = .06). Thus, there may be a relationship
between failure to recognize a consonant in a spoken word and failure
to represent it in spelling.
In terms of overall levels of performance, there was little relationship
between deletion task performance and spelling. Children erred at least
28% of the time in deleting a single consonant from a cluster onset. In
spelling, however, they omitted consonants from cluster onsets no more
than 16% of the time.
DISCUSSION
The results of this study address several issues-the effects of syllable
structure on children’s performance in phonological awareness and spelling tasks, the relationship between phonological awareness and spelling,
and the phonological awareness and spelling skills of dyslexic children.
We will discuss each of these issues in turn.
The Effects of Linguistic Structure on Phonological
Awareness
and Spelling
The results of the phonological awareness tasks suggest that the role
of a phoneme in the syllable-in
particular, its role in the onset-affects
children’s ability to access the phoneme. The effects of linguistic structure go beyond those of the phoneme’s serial position in the stimulus.
Effects of linguistic structure appear in the auditory recognition task.
With serial position in the stimulus equated, children had more trouble
recognizing a consonant when it was part of a cluster onset than when
it was an onset on its own. Thus, the first phonemes of CCVs were
harder to recognize than the first phonemes of CVCs; the second pho-
172
BRUCK
AND
TREIMAN
nemes of CCVs were harder to recognize than the second phonemes of
VCVs. These results are consistent with those of earlier studies with 5year-olds (Treiman, 1985a, Experiment 2; Treiman, in press). Although
children’s access to phonemes within onsets improves from age 5 to age
7, some difficulty with cluster onsets remains among the normal 7-yearolds studied here.
The effects of syllable structure on phonemic awareness are even more
dramatic for deletion than for recognition. When asked to omit the entire
onset of a syllable (Block 3 of auditory and visual deletion tasks), children
had more trouble with cluster onsets than with single-phoneme onsets.
The error rate on cluster stimuli, pooling over dyslexics and normals
and over auditory and visual deletion, was 14%. However, all tasks
involving clusters were not equally difficult. Children had much more
trouble deleting one phoneme of the cluster (Blocks 1 and 2) than the
entire cluster (Block 3). The error rate was about 43% when children
were required to drop the second phoneme of the cluster and keep the
first (Block 2). Children had most difficulty omitting the first phoneme
of the cluster and retaining the second (Block 1). The error rate here
was a staggering 71%, pooling over dyslexics and normals. Even third
graders who read and spelled at the fourth-grade level had an error rate
of 50% in this task. Thus, contrary to the suggestion of Bruce (1964),
deleting the first phoneme of a spoken syllable is not always easier than
deleting a middle phoneme. When the first phoneme is part of a cluster
onset, the deletion task is quite hard.
A comparison of the deletion and recognition results helps to specify
children’s difficulty in apprehending the structure of complex onsets. It
was harder for children to recognize the second consonant of an onset
cluster than the first; it was easier for them to delete the second consonant
of a cluster than the first. The different results for the two tasks do not
appear to reflect the order of presentation of the blocks of stimuli in
each task. In the auditory recognition task, the first block was easier
than the second; in the deletion task, the reverse was true. The results
for the two tasks are consistent with one another if we assume that,
within an onset cluster, the first consonant is more salient or more
available than the second (see Stemberger dz Treiman, 1986, for supporting evidence from adults). If the first consonant of the cluster is
more accessible, it should be easier to recognize. Further, due to the
low salience of /l/ in a syllable like /gli/, children should have trouble
should
transforming /gli/ into /li/. The /gli/ ---+ /gi/ transformation
be somewhat easier because of the greater salience of /g/. Thus, the
results of both the deletion and recognition tasks point to a relative
salience for the first consonants of complex onsets. This conclusion holds
even though overall levels of performance were much lower for deletion
than for recognition, as Yopp (1988) also found.
PHONOLOGICAL
AWARENESS
AND
SPELLING
173
One aspect of the deletion results remains to be discussed-the
poor
performance on the visual task relative to the auditory one when deleting
the initial consonant of a CCV. In the visual task, three blocks were set
out to represent a CCV, perhaps conflicting with the children’s idea that
CCVs contain two parts. Thus, children may be confused when the
experimenter removes just one block. It is not clear, however, why the
visual task was significantly harder than the auditory one only when
children were to delete initial consonants. Perhaps visual presentation
caused most difficulty for the hardest task-deletion
of the initial consonant of a cluster.
We have shown that the linguistic structure of a spoken stimulus affects
children’s performance on phonological awareness tests, both recognition
and deletion. Linguistic
structure also influences children’s ability to
represent the phonological form of a spoken stimulus in spelling. It is
easier for children to produce a plausible rendering of a CVC syllable
than a CCV syllable. The difference arises, in part, because children
sometimes fail to represent the second consonants of CCVs. Since the
second consonants of cluster onsets are less accessible than the initial
ones, as we have seen, they are more often omitted in spelling. Children
fail to spell the /l/ of /bli/ because /l/ is the second phoneme of the
onset, not just because /l/ is the second phoneme of the stimulus.
The omission rates on the second consonants of clusters in this study
were somewhat lower than those observed in a previous study of first
graders’ spontaneous spellings (Treiman, 1985b), perhaps because the
previous study included data from the beginning of the first-grade year
and because the children sometimes attempted more complex words than
those presented here. The present omission rates are also lower than
those reported for younger children (Barton et al., 1980; Miller & Limber,
1985). Although omissions of consonants in clusters decline with increasing spelling ability, these errors are nevertheless detectable among
children who spell and read at the second-grade level.
So far, our discussion of the effects of linguistic structure on phonological awareness and on spelling has assumed that the role of a phoneme
within the syllable onset is critical. That is, children have difficulty dissecting onsets and representing their separate phonemes in spelling. However, it is also possible that children have trouble analyzing and spelling
any consonant cluster, regardless of whether the cluster forms a syllable
onset. To address this issue, future research must examine clusters in
different positions of spoken words. Some preliminary evidence on this
point comes from unpublished results of Bruck. Normal readers in second
and third grades were given auditory and visual deletion tasks in which
they were asked to delete (a) the first phonemes of CVC syllables, (b)
the first phonemes of CCVCs, (c) the last phonemes of CVCs, and (d)
the last phonemes of CVCCs. Pooling over grades and over auditory
174
BRUCK
AND
TREIMAN
and visual presentation,
the error rates were 0, 51, 9, and 13% for
conditions a, b, c, and d, respectively. These results suggest that clusters
at the ends of words are not especially difficult.
The Relationship
between Phonological
Awareness and Spelling
Is children’s performance on onset clusters in phonological awareness
tests related to their ability to represent these clusters in spelling? If
phonological awareness is intimately tied to the acquisition of literacy,
such a relationship should exist. Our results are compatible with the idea
that ability to recognize the /l/ in a syllable like /bli/ is linked to the
ability to represent that /l/ in spelling. One piece of evidence for this
claim is that the error rates for the second consonants of CCVs in the
auditory recognition task were almost identical to the omission rates for
consonants in the same positions of CCVs in spelling. Moreover, those
children who showed higher omission rates in spelling also had more
trouble with the corresponding consonants in the recognition task, although the correlation was not high.
Although performance in one type of phonological awareness testrecognition-may
be related to spelling ability, performance in another
type of phonological
awareness test-deletion-does
not seem to be
closely related. Most of the children in this study had great trouble
deleting just one consonant of a cluster onset. Their error rates in the
deletion tasks exceeded their omission rates in spelling by large margins.
Apparently, the deletion and recombination
operations that are involved
in the phoneme deletion task are not required for spelling. To the contrary, spelling knowledge might itself foster deletion, helping children to
attempt the task using imagined spellings rather than phonological forms.
The idea that phoneme recognition but not phoneme deletion is a
precondition for spelling has some implications for the design of phonological awareness training programs. Such training has had some success
in promoting young children’s spelling and reading skills (Ball & Blachman, 1988; Bradley & Bryant, 1983; Lundberg, Frost, 8z Petersen, 1988;
Treiman & Baron, 1983). An important question (Lewkowicz, 1980) concerns the specific phonological skills that should be taught. Our results
imply that training in phoneme recognition could be an important part
of phonological awareness instruction. However, training in deletionespecially deletion of phonemes in onset clusters-may
be quite difficult
and may involve skills above and beyond those required for spelling.
The Spelling and Phonological
Awareness of Dyslexic Children
As discussed in the Introduction,
there has been a debate over whether
dyslexics are delayed or deviant in their acquisition of spelling and phonological awareness skills. With respect to spelling, even though the dyslexics in our study performed like the younger controls on a standardized
PHONOLOGICAL
AWARENESS
AND
SPELLING
175
word spelling test, they made more illegal spellings on our experimental
tasks. This difference arose, in part, because the dyslexics more often
omitted consonant phonemes. This result fits with Bruck’s (1988) finding
that dyslexics are more likely to make nonphonetic spelling errors than
spelling-level
matched controls. However, our findings disagree with
those of Nelson (1980) and Moats (1983). It should be noted that the
previous studies examined a broad range of word types; they did not
focus on onset clusters, as our study did. Although the dyslexics in our
study performed at lower levels than the normals on the experimental
spelling tasks, the two groups showed similar patterns of performance.
Both normal children and dyslexics made more errors on CCVs than
CVCs. Thus, the spelling results are most consistent with the weak
version of the developmental deficit hypothesis: Dyslexics’ poor spelling
skills reflect, in part, poor ability to use sound-spelling information to
write both familiar and unfamiliar words.
The phonological
awareness data, too, are most compatible with a
weak version of the developmental deficit hypothesis. Although dyslexics
performed more poorly than younger normal children of the same spelling
level, their patterns of performance were qualitatively
similar to those
of the controls. Like normal children, dyslexics had difficulty accessing
the individual consonants within cluster onsets, especially the second
consonants. This finding appears to conflict with that of Morais et al.
(1984), who found that French-speaking
dyslexics did not have more
difficulty deleting the initial consonants of cluster onsets than deleting
single-consonant onsets. However, the effects of linguistic structure may
have been masked in that study because of a lloor effect for dyslexics.
The dyslexics’ low overall levels of performance in our spelling and
phonological awareness tasks are compatible with the view that dyslexics’ spelling problems reflect, in part, their problems in accessing the
phonemes in spoken words. Although dyslexics have poor phonological
awareness and spelling skills, they seem to use the same processes as
younger normal children. Thus, children who are learning to spellwhether they are classified as dyslexic or normal-make
errors on onset
clusters because of their difficulty in apprehending the internal structure
of these clusters. There are no particular errors that are unique to
dyslexics.
APPENDIX
Stimuli for Each Task in Order of Presentation
Articulation
Screening Pretest
save, food, thin, jly, stop, drive, allow, shrimp, free, glad, skate, three,
arrive, show, speak, snow
176
BRUCK AND TREIMAN
Auditory
Recognition
Task
Block 1, Group 1: /spoi/, /kri/, /saip/, /suk/, /stau/, /baip/, /saup/,
/kit/, /snai/, /soim/, /blai/, /sku/
Block 1, Group 2: /flau/, /fum/, /bru/, /fait/, /buk/, /fauk/, /floi/,
/faud/, /poim/,
/fru/, /ploi/, /frau/
Block 2, Group 1: /gli/, /alai/, /smi/, /ali/, /gb/, /akoi/, /alai/, /glau/,
/ami/, /ala/, /gioi/, /skoi/
Block 2, Group 2: /dri/, /aroi/, /am,/, /dro/, /ari/, /stoi/, /droi/, /are/,
/at-au/, /smD/, /drau/, /atoi/
Block 3 of Deletion
/prov/,
IW,
/W,
Isif/,
/pW,
/skd,
Word Spelling
Task
/sDm/, /staib/,
b-w/,
h-4,
lfd,
/spif/,
/b/,
/put/,
/saib/,
/POV/
Task
blow, leap, bowl, shrew, feel, shows, reeJ howl, tree, jlea, plow, beet,
peel, glee, free, threw, flee, chews, plea, leaf
Nonword
Spelling
Task
/bli/, /sm/, /kill, /api/,
/sDn/, /sb/, /amu/, /air/,
/bull,
/am/,
/kli/,
/sku/,
/W,
/akB/,
/suk/,
/ad,
/P~u/,
/all/,
/ooz/, /Sri/, /kir/, /ali/, /are/,
/ami/, /alu/, /d/, /5ro/, /smu/,
/kc/,
/sum/
Key to Notation:
/oi/as in boy
/if as in bee
/ai/ as in buy
/au/ as in cow
/a/ as in sofa
/B/ as in bought
/o/ as in toe
/E/
/A/
/I/
/a/
/II/
/S/
/e/
as in
as in
as in
as in
as in
as in
as in
bed
but
bit
father
boot
ship
thin
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RECEIVED:
June 19, 1989;
REVISED:
February 5, 1990.