There have been relatively few single case studies concerned with the remediation of spelling deficits among developmental
impairments. Among these there have been a small number that targeted specific components of the spelling process and used
linguistic theories as theoretical underpinning for the development of remediation procedures. This single case study examines
remediation of writing skills and aims at evaluating two different lexically based intervention methods, one of which used
Optimality Theory as its basis. We applied a rule-based remediation and an intervention method using whole-word forms to a
child with selective impairments in the lexical-graphemic components. The investigation was done with words in which phoneme-grapheme-correspondences
in word final position change due to voicing neutralization. The individual exhibited a method- and item-specific effect with
respect to the rule-based method. In addition, a transfer effect to untreated items and a generalization effect to untrained
but related tasks was observed. The absence of a method-specific and a generalization effect for the whole-word form intervention
and the success of the rule-based method is determined by the specific cognitive component(s)s that constitute the source
of the deficit and the appropriateness of Optimality Theory to address this particular deficit.