Are dyslexic children sensitive to the morphological structure of words when they read? The case of dyslexic readers of French.
Typically, research has cited a deficient use of word recognition procedures mainly caused by a phonological deficit as the source of dyslexic students' reading difficulties. However, recent studies have shown that morphological processing also plays an important part in reading. In the present study, sensitivity to the morphological structure of words was assessed with a plausibility judgment task, where participants determined which of two pseudo-words most resembled a real word in French, and with a decomposition task requiring participants to extract the base forms of morphologically complex words. Dyslexic participants (DYS, n = 26) aged 9-12 years were matched to 26 participants of the same chronological age (CA) and 30 younger participants of the same reading age (RA). Overall, the decomposition task was less successful at demonstrating morphological knowledge than the plausibility judgment task. Results indicate that dyslexic participants demonstrated some morphological sensitivity, particularly on the plausibility task, but were outperformed by both control groups on both tasks. Performance on morphological tasks was significantly correlated to reading comprehension scores. More research needs to be carried out to better comprehend the effects of task characteristics on dyslexic participants' success and before claiming a different or deviant developmental path for morphological knowledge.
Université de Montréal, Montréal, Canada.
Rachel
R
Berthiaume
Daniel
D
Daigle
D000293:Adolescent; D002648:Child; D032882:Comprehension; D004410:Dyslexia / Q000150:complications* / Q000523:psychology; D005260:Female; D005602:France; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual / Q000502:physiology*; D011932:Reading; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology; D014825:Vocabulary
dyslexia; morphology; reading