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Morphological awareness and reading comprehension: Examining mediating factors.

Kyle C Levesque¹, Michael J Kieffer², S Hélène Deacon¹

¹Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia B3H 4R2, Canada.

Journal of Experimental Child Psychology

|April 2, 2017

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Morphological awareness, the ability to manipulate language meaning units, directly and indirectly improves reading comprehension in third graders. This involves skills like morphological decoding and analysis, enhancing word reading and vocabulary.

Area of Science:

Linguistics
Developmental Psychology
Education

Background:

The precise mechanisms linking morphological awareness to reading comprehension require further elucidation.
Morphological awareness involves understanding and manipulating the smallest units of meaning in language.
Previous research suggests a connection, but the pathways are not fully understood.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate the indirect and direct pathways through which morphological awareness influences reading comprehension.
To evaluate the roles of morphological decoding, morphological analysis, word reading, and vocabulary as potential mediators.
To control for the effects of phonological awareness and nonverbal ability.

Main Methods:

A quantitative study involving 221 third-grade English-speaking children.

Keywords:

Mediation Morphological analysis Morphological awareness Morphological decoding Path analysis Reading comprehension

Related Experiment Videos

Multivariate path analyses were employed to model the relationships between variables.

Key assessments included measures of morphological awareness, decoding, analysis, word reading, vocabulary, phonological awareness, and nonverbal ability.

Main Results:

Two significant indirect pathways from morphological awareness to reading comprehension were identified.
The first indirect pathway involved morphological decoding and word reading.
The second indirect pathway involved morphological analysis. A direct positive relationship between morphological awareness and reading comprehension was also observed.
Morphological awareness positively impacted reading comprehension independently of other measured variables.

Conclusions:

Morphological awareness plays a crucial role in reading comprehension through both direct and indirect mechanisms.
Interventions targeting morphological skills may enhance reading comprehension in children.
Understanding these pathways provides valuable insights for educational practices and reading development research.