I experience the same but I've always been an extremely strong speller. I think it's a biased viewpoint. I remember the kids in grade school who really struggled, and I've always wondered how that same group fares these days with autocorrect: if they pick up the correct spelling through repeat exposure or the opposite is true and they end up relying on autocorrect.

I don't know of any of the research, but I suspect that teaching reading via "sight reading" over phonics is heavily detrimental to developing an intrinsic automatic sense of spelling.