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Morphological effects in children word reading: a priming study in fourth graders
Séverine Casalis1, Marion Dusautoir, Pascale Colé
1Laboratoire URECA, Université Lille Nord de France, France. severine.casalis@univ-lille3.fr
The British Journal of Developmental Psychology
|December 10, 2009
Summary
Young readers utilize word structure (morphology) during reading. This study shows morphological processing occurs early in word recognition for children learning to read.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Psychology
- Developmental Psychology
- Linguistics
Background:
- Emerging evidence suggests morphology influences reading acquisition in young learners.
- Children may be sensitive to the internal morphemic structure of written words.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate if and when morphological information is activated during visual word recognition in children.
- To determine the interplay between morphological and orthographic processing in early reading stages.
Main Methods:
- French fourth graders performed visual lexical decision tasks.
- Target words were preceded by primes with either morphological or orthographic relationships.
- Prime durations were varied (short and long) to assess temporal processing stages.
Main Results:
- Equivalent facilitation priming effects were observed for both morphological and orthographic primes at short durations.
- A significant facilitation effect was found only for morphologically related primes at longer durations.
Conclusions:
- Morphological processing is involved in children's visual word recognition.
- At early stages, morphological information processing is not distinct from formal (orthographic) processing in young readers.
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