Individual differences in children's reading and spelling strategies and the skills supporting strategy use

• Error analysis provides insight into children's reading and spelling strategies.
• Children's cognitive skill base predicts dependence on different strategies.
• Decoding skill positively predicts a phonological reading strategy.
• Children are variable in their strategy use for reading and spelling.

The present study examined individual differences in children's reading and spelling strategies and the child specific characteristics and cognitive skills predicting strategy use. One hundred and seventy two children (average age 7 years and 7 months, .64 SD) completed assessments of receptive vocabulary, reading frequency, decoding skill, orthographic processing skill, irregular word reading and spelling and standardised assessments of word reading and spelling. Analysis of children's reading and spelling errors illustrated that different cognitive skills predicted dependence on different strategies. In reading, decoding skill positively predicted a phonological strategy and inversely predicted an orthographic strategy. In spelling, orthographic processing skill positively predicted an orthographic strategy and inversely predicted a phonological strategy. Overall, a phonological reading strategy and orthographic spelling strategy were most closely associated with reading and spelling performance. Individual differences in children's reading and spelling strategies, the effectiveness of these strategies and the skills predicting strategy choice are discussed.