The Role of Phonological and Rhythmic Skills in Learning to Write Words in Spanish

ABSTRACT Background Both phonological and stress awareness have been related to the development of literacy. Moreover, according to Goswami's temporal sampling theory, another prosodic factor, rhythmic synchronization skill, also favours reading acquisition. However, previous findings on the relation between prosody and literacy are sometimes inconsistent. The present study focuses on word spelling, with two main objectives. The first is to determine whether phonological awareness and, in particular, stress awareness predict spelling accuracy. The second research goal is to evaluate the predictive capacity of nonlinguistic rhythmic synchronization skills with respect to spelling accuracy after controlling for phonological and stress awareness. Methods To address these goals, 54 Spanish first graders aged 6–7 years were given phonological, rhythmic synchronization and spelling accuracy tests. Results The results obtained suggest that segmental and suprasegmental skills predict spelling accuracy. Furthermore, the relationship between rhythm and spelling accuracy depends on the type of nonlinguistic rhythm; that is, spelling accuracy is related to a faster rhythm (2 Hz), but not to a slower one (1.5 Hz). Conclusions These findings highlight the role of rhythm in the development of spelling accuracy in Spanish‐speaking first graders.