Does morphological structure modulate access to embedded word meaning in child readers?

Jana Hasenäcker,Olga Solaja,Davide Crepaldi

doi:10.3758/s13421-021-01164-3

Jana Hasenäcker, Olga Solaja + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3758/s13421-021-01164-3

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Abstract

Beginning readers have been shown to be sensitive to the meaning of embedded neighbors (e.g., CROW in CROWN). Moreover, developing readers are sensitive to the morphological structure of words (TEACH-ER). However, the interaction between orthographic and morphological processes in meaning activation during reading is not well established. What determines semantic access to orthographically embedded words? What is the role of suffixes in this process? And how does this change throughout development? To address these questions, we asked 80 Italian elementary school children (third, fourth, and fifth grade) to make category decisions on words (e.g., is CARROT a type of food?). Critically, some target words for no-answers (e.g., is CORNER a type of food?) contained category-congruent embedded stems (i.e., CORN). To gauge the role of morphology in this process, half of the embedded stems were accompanied by a pseudosuffix (CORN-ER) and half by a non-morphological ending (PEA-CE). Results revealed that words were harder to reject as members of a category when the embedded stem was category-congruent. This effect held both with and without a pseudosuffix, but was larger for pseudosuffixed words in the error rates. These results suggest that orthographic stems are activated and activation is fed forward to the semantic level regardless of morphological structure, followed by a decision-making process that might strategically use suffix-like endings.

Highlights

Learning to activate meaning from abstract symbols is one of the core achievements of reading acquisition
Previous studies have shown that beginning readers already access semantic information from orthographically embedded neighbors, like CROW in CROWN (Nation & Cocksey, 2009)
We observed an effect of category congruency in both accuracy and response times, for children across all grades: words were harder to reject when the embedded word was congruent with the given category (e.g., CORNER with the embedded word CORN in the category “food”)

Summary

Introduction

Learning to activate meaning from abstract symbols is one of the core achievements of reading acquisition. How exactly this skill develops in children is still not well understood (cf Nation, 2009). Previous studies have shown that beginning readers already access semantic information from orthographically embedded neighbors, like CROW in CROWN (Nation & Cocksey, 2009). At the same time, developing readers become sensitive to the morphological structure of words (e.g., DEAL–ER; e.g., Burani et al, 2002). Orthographic and morphological processes seem to interact during visual word identification (e.g., Grainger & Ziegler, 2011). We address the use of orthographic and morphological information in word-meaning activation in children

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