Morphemes, spelling and development: Comments on “The timing and mechanisms of children's use of morphological information in spelling” by S. Pacton and H. Deacon

In our comments on Pacton and Deacon's discussion of children's spelling of morphemes we raise four issues: (1) whether the “timing” question should be about children's ages or about their psychological processes; (2) the crucial importance of individual differences in the study of the connections that people make between morphemes and spelling; (3) the conclusions that can be drawn from evidence for the use of non-morphemic spelling strategies; (4) the need to consider the results of intervention studies in any account of children's understanding and use of morphemic spelling rules.