Research and clinical practitioners have mixed views whether reading and spelling difficulties should be combined or seen as separate. This study examined the following: (a) if double dissociation between reading and spelling can be identified in a transparent orthography (Finnish) and (b) the cognitive and noncognitive precursors of this…

We examined the double deficit hypothesis (Wolf & Bowers, 1999) and literacy development in a longitudinal dataset of 1,006 Finnish children who were nonreaders at school entry. A single phonological awareness (PA) deficit was a predictor of pseudoword spelling accuracy and reading fluency, and a single rapid automatized naming (RAN) deficit…