| Abstract: | We investigated the initial development of reading and spelling in European Portuguese. First-graders, tested in February
and June, had to read and spell words and pseudowords. In February there were regularity and graphemic complexity effects,
indicating that these children relied on grapheme–phoneme conversion. The lexicality effect found in spelling, in June, suggest
that by the end of first grade these children had begun to construct an orthographic lexicon. However, lexical addressing
is not inconsistent with phonological mediation as regularization errors increased between the sessions. Additionally, the
previously reported similarity in global performance of Portuguese and French beginning readers may conceal processing differences
that are related to specific characteristics of the corresponding orthographic codes.
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