The role of morphology in reading in Spanish-speaking children with dyslexia

The effects of explicit morphological analysis instruction in early elementary Spanish speakers

The purpose of this study was to compare the effects of implicit and explicit morphological analysis instruction in Spanish, a language characterized by high morphological complexity and relatively consistent letter-sound correspondences. For 3 days, 94 Grade 3 Spanish monolingual students (43 girls; Mage = 8.9 years) were trained on target words containing experimenter-designed suffixes consistent in form and meaning (e.g., the suffix -isba refers to a factory in words such as "botisba" [a boot factory] and "cajisba" [a box factory]). Explicit and implicit instruction differed in the attention given to the co-occurrence of the suffixes in the target words. One day (immediate posttest) and 1 week (delayed posttest) after training concluded, participants were tested on their learning of the suffixes' form using a suffix identification task and meaning using a word definition and a multiple-choice task. Results of mixed-effects models showed that explicit instruction yielded better results for the learning of the form of the suffixes. Regarding meaning, across-condition differences were detected only in the word definition task; explicit instruction produced better results for both trained and transfer words. We discuss our findings in the context of the grain-size unit theory and examine the interplay between the language's orthographic and morphological characteristics, considering their impact on classroom instruction.

Morphological awareness and its role in early word reading in English monolinguals, Spanish-English, and Chinese-English simultaneous bilinguals

Words' morphemic structure and their orthographic representations vary across languages. How do bilingual experiences with structurally distinct languages influence children's morphological processes for word reading? Focusing on English literacy in monolinguals and bilinguals (N = 350, ages 5-9), we first revealed unique contributions of derivational ( friend-li-est) and compound (girl-friend) morphology to early word reading. We then examined mechanisms of bilingual transfer in matched samples of Spanish-English and Chinese-English dual first language learners. Results revealed a principled cross-linguistic interaction between language group (Spanish vs. Chinese bilinguals) and type of morphological awareness. Specifically, bilinguals' proficiency with the type of morphology that was less characteristic of their home language explained greater variance in their English literacy. These findings showcase the powerful effects of bilingualism on word reading processes in children who have similar reading proficiency but different language experiences, thereby advancing theoretical perspectives on literacy across diverse learners.

Contribution of morphological awareness to reading fluency of children with and without dyslexia: evidence from a transparent orthography

The goal of this study was to investigate the contribution of morphological awareness to reading fluency of children with and without dyslexia in a transparent orthography, such as the Greek one. The sample consisted of 256 Greek-speaking children (2^nd grade: 32 dyslexic and 105 typical readers, 5^th grade: 28 dyslexic and 91 typical readers). Morphological awareness was assessed with three tasks, examining inflectional, derivational, and compounding morphology. Reading fluency was evaluated at word, text, and silent level. The results indicated that dyslexic children both in 2^nd and 5^th grade face significant difficulties in inflectional, derivational, and compounding morphology compared to their peers. Hierarchical regression analyses revealed that morphological awareness significantly contributed to reading fluency of children with and without dyslexia, after controlling for non-verbal intelligence, vocabulary, and phonological awareness. Among typical readers, results indicated that inflectional, derivational, and compounding morphology had a small but significant effect on word, text, and silent reading fluency in 2^nd grade and derivational and inflectional morphology on text and silent reading fluency in 5^th grade, after controlling for non-verbal intelligence, vocabulary, and phonological awareness. For dyslexic children, a moderate-to-large effect of inflectional and derivational morphology on text and word reading fluency was restricted to 2^nd grade. Overall, morphological skills may play a supportive role in reading fluency of Greek children in first and last elementary grades. On the other hand, for Greek children facing reading problems morphological skills appeared to have a strong role in reading fluency only in first grades. Our study provided some preliminary data for the dyslexics' ability of morphological processing as a scaffolding skill for reading fluency. Implications of these findings for education are discussed.

Perceptual salience of derivational suffixes in visual word recognition

This study analyzes the role of derivational suffixes in visual word recognition, tracking the eye movements of 31 participants in a sentence-reading task in Spanish. Perceptual salience of suffixes was operationalized as the proportion of letters represented by the suffixes with respect to the full words, that is, we relate the number of letters comprising the suffixes to the number of letters in the words in which they appear. The results reveal a significant role in first fixation duration of both word frequency - the more frequent the word, the shorter the fixations, and perceptual salience - the more salient the suffix, the longer the fixations. Moreover, in gaze duration, our results show a main effect of word length - the longer the word, the longer the fixations; word frequency; and significant interactions between word frequency and perceptual salience of suffixes on the one hand - the effect of word frequency is only significant when perceptual salience of suffixes is high, and between word frequency and word length on the other hand - the frequency effect decreases as word length increases. Overall results are interpreted in the light of the dual route models by which full-form and morphological processing interactively cooperate in visual word recognition.

Morphological De-com-pos-it-ion Helps Recognize Low-er Frequency Words in Typically Developing Spanish-Speaking Children

Several studies in Spanish and other languages have shown that, in a lexical decision task, children are more likely to accept pseudowords with a known morphological structure as words as compared to non-morphological pseudowords. Morphology also facilitates visual word recognition of actual words in children with reading difficulties. In the present study, we explored the role of morphology, frequency and reading proficiency (measured by school grade) in visual word recognition. Typically developing readers of Spanish from 2nd, 4th and 6th grades performed a lexical decision task in which the morphological complexity and the frequency of the words were factorially manipulated. Our results showed that morphology benefited the accuracy of visual word recognition for low frequency words only. We conclude that decomposition in morphemes occurs in Spanish only for less frequent words. These results in Spanish support models that posit the decomposition of morphologically complex words in the orthographic lexicon.

The relationship between morphological awareness and reading comprehension in Spanish-speaking children

In the last decades, a series of studies has explored the role of morphological awareness on reading comprehension. Path analysis studies performed in English have shown that morphological awareness benefits reading comprehension both directly and indirectly, through word decoding. This issue has seldom been explored in Spanish. The aim of this study was to replicate in Spanish the results previously found in English. We used path analysis to assess three alternative models of the relationship between morphological awareness, word decoding and reading comprehension in 4th grade Spanish-speaking children. Contrary to English, we found that morphological awareness benefits reading comprehension only directly. We conclude that in Spanish, in which accurate and fluent pronunciation of written words can be achieved through grapheme-to-phoneme conversion rules, morphological awareness does not help the correct pronunciation of words. Thus, morphological awareness is not relevant for word decoding in Spanish but is related to reading comprehension since this type of morphological knowledge provides access to the semantic and syntactic information of new words.

Does the visual attention span play a role in the morphological processing of orthographic stimuli?

We investigated whether the link between visual attention (VA) span and reading is modulated by the presence of morphemes. Second and fourth grade children, with Basque as their first language, named morphologically complex and simple words and pseudowords, and performed a task measuring VA span. The influence of VA span skills on reading was modulated by the presence of morphemes in naming speed measures. In addition, fourth grade children with a larger VA span showed larger lexicality effects (pseudoword-word reading times) only for morphologically simple stimuli. Results are interpreted as support for the notion that both transparency and morphological complexity are important factors modulating the impact of VA span skills on reading.

Reading Derived Words by Italian Children With and Without Dyslexia: The Effect of Root Length

Children with dyslexia are extremely slow at reading long words but they are faster with stimuli composed of roots and derivational suffixes (e.g., CASSIERE, ‘cashier’) than stimuli not decomposable in morphemes (e.g., CAMMELLO, ‘camel’). The present study assessed whether root length modulates children’s morphological processing. For typically developing readers, root activation was expected to be higher for longer than shorter roots because longer roots are more informative access units than shorter ones. By contrast, readers with dyslexia were not expected to be facilitated by longer roots because these roots might exceed dyslexics’ processing capacities. Two groups of Italian 6th graders, with and without dyslexia, read aloud low-frequency derived words, with familiar roots and suffixes. Word reaction times (RTs) and mispronunciations were recorded. Linear mixed-effects regression analyses on RTs showed the inhibitory effect of word length and the facilitating effect of root frequency for both children with and without dyslexia. Root length predicted RTs of typically developing readers only, with faster RTs for longer roots, over and above the inhibitory effect of word length. Furthermore, typically developing children had faster RTs on words with more frequent suffixes while children with dyslexia were faster when roots had a small family size. Generalized linear regression analyses on accuracy showed facilitating effects of word frequency and suffix frequency, for both groups. The large word length effect on latencies confirmed laborious whole-word processing in children when reading low-frequency derived words. The absence of a word frequency effect along with the facilitating effect of root frequency indicated morphemic processing in all readers. The reversed root length effect in typically developing readers pointed to a stronger activation for longer roots in keeping with the idea that these represent particularly informative units for word decoding. For readers with dyslexia the facilitating effect of root frequency (not modulated by root length) confirmed a pervasive benefit of root activation while the lack of root length modulation indicated that the longest roots were for them too large units to be processed within a single fixation.

Morpheme-Based Reading and Writing in Spanish Children with Dyslexia

It has been well documented that morphemic structure (roots and affixes) have an impact in reading, but effects seem to depend on the reading experience of readers and lexical characteristics of the stimuli. Specifically, it has been reported that morphemes constitute reading units for developing readers and children with dyslexia when they encounter a new word. In addition, recent studies have stated that the effect of morphology is also present in spelling, as morphological information facilitates spelling accuracy and influences handwriting times. The goal of this study was to investigate the role of morphology in reading and spelling fluency in Spanish children with dyslexia. For that purpose, a group of 24 children with dyslexia was compared with an age-matched group of 24 children without reading disabilities in performing a word naming task and a spelling-to-dictation task of isolated words. Morphological condition (high frequency base, low frequency base, simple) and lexicality (words vs. pseudowords) were manipulated. We considered, for the naming task, reading latencies, reading durations, reading critical segment (three first phonemes) durations and naming accuracy; and, for the spelling task, written latencies, writing durations for the whole word, writing critical segment (three first letters) durations and spelling accuracy. Results showed that Spanish children (with and without dyslexia) benefit from a high frequency base to initiate reading and writing responses, showing that they are familiar with the letter chunks that constitute a morpheme. In addition, base frequency impacts reading critical segment duration only for children with dyslexia, but for both groups in writing. In summary, children with dyslexia benefit from a high frequency base to read and spell unfamiliar stimuli.