Abstract
This study set out to examine the effects of a morpheme-based training on reading and spelling in fifth and sixth graders (N = 47), who present poor literacy skills and speak German as a second language. A computerized training, consisting of a visual lexical decision task (comprising 2,880 items, presented in 12 sessions), was designed to encourage fast morphological analysis in word processing. The children were divided between two groups: the one underwent a morpheme-based training, in which word-stems of inflections and derivations were presented for a limited duration, while their pre- and suffixes remained on screen until response. Another group received a control training consisting of the same task, except that the duration of presentation of a non-morphological unit was restricted. In a Word Disruption Task, participants read words under three conditions: morphological separation (with symbols separating between the words’ morphemes), non-morphological separation (with symbols separating between non-morphological units of words), and no-separation (with symbols presented at the beginning and end of each word). The group receiving the morpheme-based program improved more than the control group in terms of word reading fluency in the morphological condition. The former group also presented similar word reading fluency after training in the morphological condition and in the no-separation condition, thereby suggesting that the morpheme-based training contributed to the integration of morphological decomposition into the process of word recognition. At the same time, both groups similarly improved in other measures of word reading fluency. With regard to spelling, the morpheme-based training group showed a larger improvement than the control group in spelling of trained items, and a unique improvement in spelling of untrained items (untrained word-stems integrated into trained pre- and suffixes). The results further suggest some contribution of the morpheme-based training to performance in a standardized spelling task. The morpheme-based training did not, however, show any unique effect on comprehension. These results suggest that the morpheme-based training is effective in enhancing some basic literacy skill in the population examined, i.e., morphological analysis in word processing and the access to orthographic representations in spelling, with no specific effects on reading fluency and comprehension.
Highlights
The role of morphological processing in lexical access has been repeatedly shown in studies of different languages and orthographies (e.g., Drews and Zwitserlood, 1995; Clahsen, 1999; Diependaele et al, 2005; Frost et al, 2005; Penke, 2006; Smolka et al, 2007; Beyersmann et al, 2012)
The results suggested an improvement in some basic literacy measures of the morpheme-based training compared to a control intervention
As general ability has a wide influence on various cognitive tasks, variance in the literacy skills resulting from differences in general ability was controlled by excluding from analysis students who performed below the average range in the non-verbal IQ task (ZVT; Oswald and Roth, 1997)
Summary
The role of morphological processing in lexical access has been repeatedly shown in studies of different languages and orthographies (e.g., Drews and Zwitserlood, 1995; Clahsen, 1999; Diependaele et al, 2005; Frost et al, 2005; Penke, 2006; Smolka et al, 2007; Beyersmann et al, 2012). Studies of skilled readers indicate that morphological decomposition is an integral part of word processing. Methods addressing this aspect usually apply different morphological manipulations on the presentation of printed material. Children read the pseudo-words, which were built out of real morphemes faster than the pseudo-words built out of pseudo-morphemes Another task used in this study was the Word Disruption Task, in which words were presented under three conditions: (1) the morphemes of each word were separated by a symbol (e.g., fang#en). While taking into account that the separation of the syllables violated the sequence of letters of the words’ morphemes, and that this condition produced the largest disruption in reading rate, these results were taken to suggest that the processing of morphemes plays a role in word recognition.
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