The role of morphology in word naming in Spanish-speaking children

Abstract

The role of morphology in word recognition during reading acquisition in transparent orthographies is a subject that has received little attention. The goal of this study is to examine the variables affecting the fluency and accuracy for morphologically complex word reading across grade levels in Spanish. We conducted two word-naming experiments in which morphological complexity and word frequency were factorially manipulated. Experiment 1 was a cross-sectional study with 2nd-, 4th- and 6th-grade children as participants. In Experiment 2, a longitudinal study, a sample of the children in 2nd and 4th grades in Experiment 1 were retested with the same stimuli 2 years later in order to explore the evolution of morphology and frequency effects. Analyses of reading latencies and accuracy in both experiments showed that grade and frequency affected both reading fluency and accuracy. Morphology only affected fluency, irrespective of grade. In accordance with previous literature in Italian, we conclude that when learning to read in transparent orthographies, morphology mostly benefits reading fluency since accurate pronunciation can be achieved through grapheme-to-phoneme conversion rules.

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

“…However, in transparent orthographies such as that of Spanish, conscious access, through morphological awareness, to the morphological structure of words is not necessary to accomplish the correct pronunciation of a new word. This is because in transparent orthographies the access to an accurate pronunciation of any word, even if it is unknown, can be accomplished through grapheme‐phoneme conversion rules, at any stage of reading acquisition – although grapheme‐phoneme conversion rules are particularly relevant at early stages of reading acquisition (Burani et al ., ; D'Alessio et al ., ; Jaichenco & Wilson, ; Marcolini et al ., ; Ziegler & Goswami, ). This can explain why in the present study morphological awareness did not have a significant role in word decoding in Spanish.…”

“…For Spanish, the morphological knowledge that has an influence on the lexicon (i.e., decoding) is tacit morphological processing. The fact that tacit morphological processing allows for a faster and more accurate word decoding has been found in several studies in Spanish and Italian (Burani et al ., ; D'Alessio et al ., ; Jaichenco & Wilson, ; Marcolini et al ., ; Suárez‐Coalla & Cuetos, ; Suárez‐Coalla, Martínez‐García & Cuetos, ). On the other hand, the morphological knowledge that seems to influence the linguistic system is morphological awareness.…”

“…Since it is an implicit knowledge of the rules that govern morphological processing it might be related to procedural memory (Kuo & Anderson, ; Ullman, ). The studies that focused on tacit morphological processing mainly concentrated on the impact of this knowledge on tasks where morphological knowledge is not used deliberately, such as word naming and recognition (see, for example, Burani, Marcolini, De Luca & Zoccolotti, ; D'Alessio, Jaichenco & Wilson, ; Marcolini, Traficante, Zoccolotti & Burani, ). Another set of studies, particularly carried out in opaque orthographies, such as that of English, focused on morphological awareness, that is to say, the metalinguistic awareness of the morphemic structure of words and the ability to explicitly reflect upon and manipulate that structure (Carlisle, ).…”

“…However, the role of morphological awareness on word decoding in a language with consistent orthography‐to‐phonology mappings as those of Spanish is less straightforward. Indeed, in Spanish and in other languages with transparent orthographies, efficient word decoding can be achieved through grapheme‐phoneme conversion rules (Burani et al ., ; D'Alessio et al ., ; Marcolini et al ., ). Thus, morphology does not help to determine the pronunciation of words in Spanish (Nagy et al ., ) and the need to suggest a conscious and explicit processing of morphology in order to achieve decoding of unknown words seems less evident.…”

“…However, we did not expect a role for morphological awareness on word decoding, given the transparency of graphemephoneme conversion rules of Spanish. This might render the need for the conscious reflection upon larger units such as morphemes superfluous (Burani et al, 2008;D'Alessio et al, 2018;Marcolini et al, 2011). In order to replicate the work by Deacon et al (2014), we tested the same models on the relation between morphological awareness and reading comprehension.…”