Sensitivity to an untaught spelling pattern : do adults use double final consonants more in surnames than common nouns?

Adults tend to spell unfamiliar words in accordance with untaught spelling patterns. This study was the first to investigate adults‚ÄövÑv¥ sensitivity to the untaught spelling pattern that ‚ÄövÑv¿padding‚ÄövÑvp (extra letters, here doubled final consonants) occurs more frequently in English surnames than common nouns (e.g., ‚ÄövÑv¿Webb‚ÄövÑvp vs. ‚ÄövÑv¿web‚ÄövÑvp). We additionally asked if demonstrating this pattern correlated significantly with general spelling ability. Sixty-three first-year psychology students, monolingually proficient in English, completed an online standardised task of general spelling ability and a spelling choice task. In the choice task, participants heard monosyllabic nonwords framed by sentences as surnames or common nouns, and chose between single or double final consonant spellings for each (e.g., ‚ÄövÑv¿scap‚ÄövÑvp vs. ‚ÄövÑv¿scapp‚ÄövÑvp). We found that participants chose double consonant spellings significantly more often for surnames than common nouns. This tendency was weakly associated with greater absolute spelling ability. Our main result suggests that adults applied implicitly learned knowledge of this untaught spelling pattern. This supports Treiman and Kessler‚ÄövÑv¥s (2014) spelling theory, Integration of Multiple Patterns: multiple spelling patterns, including those contingent on word type, can influence spelling and can be learned implicitly. The findings may support explicit instruction of useful patterns to speed learning, since implicit learning occurs gradually.