Inventive spelling and word configuration

From readings of a text about phonics, I am convinced that inventive  or best guess spelling is helpful for children who are emerging readers.  Fox mentioned in her text that children often associate a word with one or two sounds, maybe three, and spell it that way.  Many children identify words solely by their beginning sound.  The next sound they rely on for reading and writing is the ending sound, and the middle sound--many of them vowel sounds--comes last.  

Best guess spelling seems like a valuable tool for growth in literacy.

I found it interesting that Fox seemed to dis word configuration cues and tools as helpful to literacy.  It came across in the book, I think, that word shape, word length, and letter shape have no value to literacy.  I think that Fox dismisses the significance of our sense of vision in learning to read.  

Brain rule #4 or so states that vision and sight supersede ALL other senses when it comes to our brain processing information.  If analyzing signals sent to the brain by the eyes and nerves along the way is the most important way humans process knowledge, than I think it is wrong to dismiss visual cues's importance as Fox seems to do on p. 73 of her text.  

Although it seems logical that the sound of words and letters is more helpful in learning to read, I do think that visual cues are important, perhaps more so than research has investigated.  Every author has opinions on things before they conduct research, and some of them pugnaciously resist changing those.  I think perhaps the importance of visual cues to reading is under-researched because those in the field of phonics are all about sound anyway.