Morphological priming development in Brazilian Portuguese-speaking children

Bruno Stefani Ferreira De Oliveira,Francis Ricardo Dos Reis Justi

doi:10.1186/s41155-017-0058-8

Bruno Stefani Ferreira De Oliveira, Francis Ricardo Dos Reis Justi

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1186/s41155-017-0058-8

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Abstract

Many studies have shown that, while reading, the brain works a sort of decomposing process of words, reducing them to its morphemes. Moreover, many studies have shown that morphological awareness, which is the ability to reflect upon the structure of words, may contribute to reading in Brazilian Portuguese. The present study investigated morphological priming in children and evaluated the correlation between morphological priming and morphological awareness scores. One hundred and forty-one children took part in this research: 35 second graders, 33 third graders, 33 fourth graders, and 40 fifth graders. They performed a lexical decision task (LDT) and morphological awareness task. Results indicate that as early as the second grade, children show some degree of morphological priming effects. In addition, children from the fifth grade presented morphological priming effects similar to those of a skilled reader. No correlations between morphological awareness scores and morphological priming effects were found.

Highlights

As the act of driving is to an experienced driver, the skilled reader is able to quickly decode a series of letters and extract the representation of its meaning without great efforts
No further significant results were yielded for the other comparisons
The present study is the first to investigate the development of morphological priming in Brazilian children in the beginning years of reading instruction

Summary

Introduction

As the act of driving is to an experienced driver, the skilled reader is able to quickly decode a series of letters and extract the representation of its meaning without great efforts. This is such an automated behavior that people generally do not realize how complex the reading process can be. The first model is called full listing, and it defends that words are available for recognition in the mental lexicon in its full form, without any morphological decomposition (Domínguez et al 2000).

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