Stem and derivational-suffix processing during reading by French second and third graders

ABSTRACTMorphological processing by French children was investigated in two experiments. The first showed that second and third graders read pseudowords such as chat-ure (cat-ish) composed of an illegally combined real stem and real derivational suffix faster and more accurately than they read matched pseudowords composed of a pseudostem and a real derivational suffix (e.g., chot-ure) or a pseudostem and a pseudosuffix (e.g., chot-ore). More, the chot-ure items were read faster and more accurately than the chot-ore items. These results suggest that beginning French readers are able to use morphological units (both stems and derivational suffixes) to decode new words. The second experiment compared the impact of display format on reading time. Suffixed words were presented in four segmentation formats: syllabic (ma lade), morphological (mal ade), morphological + 1 grapheme (mala de), or unsegmented (malade). For both groups of readers, the morphological + 1 condition generated the longest reading times but there was no difference between the other three conditions. It was concluded that syllables, morphemes, and whole word forms contribute to a similar extent to word reading for low-frequency words. Morphological processing may therefore be used early by French children to identify both new words and low-frequency words.

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How word frequency affects morphological processing in monolinguals and bilinguals

Bilingualism Language and Cognition ◽

10.1017/s1366728903001147 ◽

2003 ◽

Vol 6 (3) ◽

pp. 213-225 ◽

Cited By ~ 64

Author(s):

MINNA LEHTONEN ◽

MATTI LAINE

Keyword(s):

High Frequency ◽

Low Frequency ◽

Morphological Processing ◽

Decision Task ◽

Frequency Range ◽

Medium Frequency ◽

Word Forms ◽

Full Form ◽

Differential Pattern ◽

Complex Words

The present study investigated processing of morphologically complex words in three different frequency ranges in monolingual Finnish speakers and Finnish-Swedish bilinguals. By employing a visual lexical decision task, we found a differential pattern of results in monolinguals vs. bilinguals. Monolingual Finns seemed to process low frequency and medium frequency inflected Finnish nouns mostly by morpheme-based recognition but high frequency inflected nouns through full-form representations. In contrast, bilinguals demonstrated a processing delay for all inflections throughout the whole frequency range, suggesting decomposition for all inflected targets. This may reflect different amounts of exposure to the word forms in the two groups. Inflected word forms that are encountered very frequently will acquire full-form representations, which saves processing time. However, with the lower rates of exposure, which characterize bilingual individuals, full-form representations do not start to develop.

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Morpheme frequency effects in Dutch complex word reading: A developmental perspective

Applied Psycholinguistics ◽

10.1017/s0142716411000178 ◽

2011 ◽

Vol 32 (3) ◽

pp. 483-498 ◽

Cited By ~ 12

Author(s):

LUDO VERHOEVEN ◽

ROB SCHREUDER

Keyword(s):

Lexical Decision ◽

Lexical Decision Task ◽

Word Reading ◽

Word Identification ◽

Low Frequency ◽

Decision Task ◽

Word Form ◽

Word Forms ◽

Grade 3 ◽

Complex Words

ABSTRACTThis study examined to what extent advanced and beginning readers, including dyslexic readers of Dutch, make use of morphological access units in the reading of polymorphemic words. Therefore, experiments were carried out in which the role of singular root form frequency in reading plural word forms was investigated in a lexical decision task with both adults and children. Twenty-three adult readers, 37 8-year-old children from Grade 3, 43 11-year-old children from Grade 6, and 33 11-year-old dyslexic readers were presented with a lexical decision task in which we contrasted plural word forms with a high versus low frequency of the singular root form. For the adults, it was found that the accuracy and speed of lexical decision is determined by the surface frequency of the plural word form. The frequency of the constituent root form played a role as well, but in the low-frequency plural words only. Furthermore, a strong developmental effect regarding the accuracy and speed of reading plural word forms was found. An effect of plural word form frequency on word identification was evidenced in all groups. The singular root form frequency also had an impact of the reading of the plural word forms. In the normal reading and dyslexic children, plurals with a high-frequency singular root form were read more accurately and faster than plurals with a low singular root frequency. It can be concluded that constituent morphemes have an impact on the reading of polymorphemic words. The results can be explained in the light of a word experience model leaving room for morphological constituency to play a role in the lexical access of complex words as a function of reading skill and experience and word and morpheme frequency.

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Morphological awareness contributes to early literacy in linguistically diverse readers

10.31234/osf.io/xpycj ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Rebecca A. Marks ◽

Danielle Labotka ◽

Xin Sun ◽

Nia Nickerson ◽

Rachel L. Eggleston ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Early Literacy ◽

Language Learners ◽

Word Reading ◽

First Language ◽

Morphological Awareness ◽

Linguistically Diverse ◽

New Words ◽

Theoretical Perspectives ◽

English Literacy ◽

The Impact

Morphological awareness, or awareness of the smallest meaningful units of language, is a well-established predictor of literacy in late elementary school and beyond. Across languages, morphemes are combined to help create and recognize new words primarily through two common principles: derivation (friend-li-est, un-friend-ly) and compounding (boy-friend). Yet, the complexity of English phonology and orthography make it difficult for young learners to identify morphemes in speech as well as in print. This manuscript explores two unresolved issues about how morphological awareness contributes to English literacy in linguistically diverse beginning readers. First, we examined the relation between children’s awareness of derivational and compound morphology and their emerging literacy in kindergarten through 3rd grade. Second, we examined the impact of bilingual experiences with morphologically distinct languages on this relation. Three hundred fifty children, ages 5-9, participated in this study, including English monolinguals, and Spanish-English and Chinese-English dual first language learners. Results revealed a robust, concurrent relationship between morphological awareness and both word reading and reading comprehension. Furthermore, bilingualism moderated this relationship. In bilinguals, the type of morphology that was less characteristic of the children’s heritage language was more closely associated with their English literacy: derivational in Chinese-English bilinguals’ word reading, and compound morphology in Spanish-English bilinguals. These findings inform theoretical perspectives on learning to read across linguistically diverse learners.

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Phonetic processing when learning words

International Journal of Behavioral Development ◽

10.1177/0165025415570646 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 40 (1) ◽

pp. 41-52 ◽

Cited By ~ 13

Author(s):

Mélanie Havy ◽

Camillia Bouchon ◽

Thierry Nazzi

Keyword(s):

Word Learning ◽

Time Course ◽

Phonological Acquisition ◽

Native Languages ◽

New Words ◽

European Portuguese ◽

Word Forms ◽

Phonetic Contrasts ◽

Contrast Group ◽

The Impact

Infants have remarkable abilities to learn several languages. However, phonological acquisition in bilingual infants appears to vary depending on the phonetic similarities or differences of their two native languages. Many studies suggest that learning contrasts with different realizations in the two languages (e.g., the /p/, /t/, /k/ stops have similar VOT values in French, Spanish, Italian and European Portuguese, but can be confounded with the /b/, /d/, /g/ in German and English) poses a particular challenge. The current study explores how similarity or difference in the realization of phonetic contrasts affects word-learning outcomes. Bilingual infants aged 16 months were tested on their capacity to learn pairs of new words, differing by a phonological feature (voicing versus place) on their initial consonant. Two groups of infants were considered: bilinguals exposed to languages (French and either Spanish, Italian or European Portuguese) in which the contrasts tested are realized relatively similarly (“similar contrast” group) and bilinguals exposed to languages (French and either English or German) in which the contrasts are realized very differently (“different contrast” group). In the present word-learning situation, the “similar contrast” bilinguals successfully processed the relevant phonetic detail of the word forms, while the “different contrast” bilinguals failed. The present pattern reveals the impact on word learning of phonological differences between the two languages, which is consistent with studies reporting slight time course differences among bilinguals in phonological acquisition. In line with a larger literature on bilingual acquisition, these results provide further evidence that linguistic similarity or difference in the two languages influences the pattern of bilingual acquisition.

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Obligatory decomposition in reading prefixed words

The Mental Lexicon ◽

10.1075/ml.1.2.02taf ◽

2006 ◽

Vol 1 (2) ◽

pp. 183-199 ◽

Cited By ~ 37

Author(s):

Marcus Taft ◽

Sam Ardasinski

Keyword(s):

Lexical Decision ◽

High Frequency ◽

Low Frequency ◽

Real Word ◽

Word Representation ◽

Pathways Model ◽

Whole Word ◽

Prefixed Words ◽

The Impact

The reported experiment examines the impact of stem frequency on lexical decision responses to prefixed words. Both when the nonword distractors had nonsense stems (e.g., recodge) and real-word stems (e.g., relaugh), words with high frequency stems (e.g., unreal) were recognized more quickly than words with low frequency stems (e.g., refuel) when matched on surface frequency. This was taken as evidence that a whole-word representation exists for prefixed words, but that activation of this representation is always mediated by a representation of the stem, unlike the claims of a Dual Pathways model.

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Sleep-dependent consolidation in children with comprehension and vocabulary weaknesses: It’ll be alright on the night?

10.31234/osf.io/5bmpt ◽

2019 ◽

Author(s):

Emma James ◽

M. Gareth Gaskell ◽

Lisa Henderson

Keyword(s):

Picture Naming ◽

Developmental Disorders ◽

Word Reading ◽

Vocabulary Knowledge ◽

Word Knowledge ◽

Stem Completion ◽

New Words ◽

Poor Comprehenders ◽

Word Forms ◽

Underlying Mechanisms

Background: Vocabulary is crucial for an array of life outcomes and is frequently impaired in developmental disorders. Notably, ‘poor comprehenders’ (children with comprehension deficits but intact word-reading) often have vocabulary deficits, but underlying mechanisms remain unclear. Prior research suggests intact encoding but difficulties consolidating new word knowledge. We test the hypothesis that poor comprehenders’ sleep-associated vocabulary consolidation is compromised by their impoverished lexical-semantic knowledge.Methods: Memory for new words was tracked across wake and sleep to isolate processes of encoding and consolidation in 8-to-12-year-old good and poor comprehenders. Each child participated in two sets of sessions in which they were taught 12 new words either at the start (AM-encoding) or end (PM-encoding) of the day, alongside training on a nonverbal declarative task. Memory was assessed immediately, 12-, and 24- hours later via stem-completion, picture-naming, and definition tasks to probe different aspects of new word knowledge. Long-term retention was assessed 1-2 months later. Results: Recall of word-forms improved over sleep and post-sleep wake, as measured in both stem-completion and picture-naming tasks. Counter to hypotheses, deficits for poor comprehenders were not observed in consolidation but instead were seen across measures and throughout testing, suggesting an encoding deficit. Variability in vocabulary knowledge across the whole sample predicted sleep-associated consolidation, but only when words were learned early in the day and not when sleep followed soon after learning.Conclusions: Poor comprehenders showed weaker encoding of new word knowledge than good comprehenders, but sleep-associated consolidation benefits were comparable between groups. Sleeping soon after learning had long-lasting benefits for memory, and may be especially beneficial for children with weaker vocabulary. These results provide new insights into the breadth of poor comprehenders’ vocabulary weaknesses, and ways in which learning might be better timed to remediate vocabulary difficulties.

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

Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology ◽

10.1177/1747021818806470 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 72 (7) ◽

pp. 1704-1716

Author(s):

Alexia Antzaka ◽

Joana Acha ◽

Manuel Carreiras ◽

Marie Lallier

Keyword(s):

Visual Attention ◽

Word Reading ◽

First Language ◽

Fourth Grade ◽

Morphological Processing ◽

Naming Speed ◽

Attention Span ◽

Morphological Complexity ◽

The Impact

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.

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