Auditory Morphological Knowledge Among Children With Developmental Dyslexia

The aim of the present study is to examine the morphological knowledge of readers with developmental dyslexia compared to chronological age and reading-level matched controls. The study also analyzes the errors dyslexics make and their metamorphological awareness compared to controls. Participants included 31 seventh-grade dyslexic children and two matched control groups of normal readers: 34 seventh graders matched for chronological age and 32 third graders matched for reading age. Two tasks were administered via the auditory modality—morphological priming and morphological analogies task. We also performed error analysis and a metamorphological interview. Our analyses reveal that although dyslexics perform equally to chronological age matched controls on the priming task and similarly to reading-level matched controls on the morphological analogies task, their errors and metamorphological awareness are qualitatively different. Developmental dyslexia is characterized by nonfluent word identification and poor spelling performance that are not the result of sensory impairments, impairments in intelligence, or inadequate educational experience (American Psychiatric Association, 2013; Pennington, 2009). So far, little attention has been devoted to the study of morphological knowledge in individuals with dyslexia, an area in which a growing body of data indicates that they score lower than skilled readers (Robertson, Joanisse, Desroches, & Terry, 2013; Schiff & Raveh, 2007; Schiff & Ravid, 2007; 2013). In this study, the term morphological knowledge (Bowers, Kirby, & Deacon, 2010) encompasses three constructs: morphological processing, morphological awareness, and metamorphological awareness. Although morphological processing refers to less conscious processing of morphological information (e.g., Deacon, Parrila, & Kirby, 2008), morphological awareness is defined as “awareness of morphemic structures of words and the ability to reflect on and manipulate that structure” (Carlisle, 1995, p. 194). By metamorphological awareness we mean a higher degree of analyzed morphological knowledge and a high level of processing control, which manifests itself as an intentional focus on word forms. In this study we examined the morphological knowledge of children with dyslexia using the auditory modality. Using a within-participant design, we tested children dyslexic readers and chronological age matched and reading-level matched controls (respectively) on auditory morphological tasks of two kinds—a morphological priming task and an analogy completion task. Participants’ responses were analyzed for accuracy and response time, as well as for error types. In addition, qualitative data from a follow-up metamorphological interview was analyzed to pinpoint processing differences between the dyslexia and controls. CONTACT Rachel Schiff [email protected] School of Education, Bar-Ilan University, 52900 Ramat-Gan, Israel. Color versions of one or more of the figures in the article can be found online at www.tandfonline.com/hssr. Supplemental data for this article can be accessed at www.tandfonline.com/hssr. © 2016 Society for the Scientific Study of Reading SCIENTIFIC STUDIES OF READING 2016, VOL. 20, NO. 2, 140–154 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10888438.2015.1094074 Morphological processing in dyslexia and the priming paradigm Studies on normal adult readers indicate that morphological processing may be influenced by orthographic and phonological factors (Feldman, Rueckl, DiLiberto, Pastizzo, & Vellutino, 2002; Rueckl, Mikolinski, Raveh, Miner, & Mars, 1997). These findings are theoretically and methodologically relevant for investigating the quality of morphological processes in individuals with dyslexia. One method that has been especially useful for investigating the effect of morphological structure on automatic word recognition is the priming paradigm, where the presentation of a morphologically related word (e.g., scanner) facilitates the identification speed and accuracy of the target word (e.g., scan). This facilitation is considered evidence for readers’ sensitivity to morphological structure during visual word recognition (Beyersmann, Iakimova, Ziegler, & Colé, 2014; Quémart, Casalis, & Colé, 2011). A few studies have examined morphological processing in students with dyslexia using the priming paradigm. In Schiff and Raveh (2007), university undergraduates diagnosed with dyslexia were tested on two visual morphological priming tasks to examine whether well-compensated dyslexic adults represent and analyze the morphological structure of the words they read in the same manner as skilled readers. Evidence from these studies reveals that in contrast to students with normal reading ability, none of the students with dyslexia showed morphological priming. Working on the assumption that morphological priming reflects the psychological reality of the root morpheme and its role in lexical access, the lack of morphological priming in students with dyslexia suggests that their lexical access does not involve morphological decomposition. Raveh and Schiff (2008) continued this research path by examining whether morphological priming among dyslexic adults may be related to modality-specific processes, testing dyslexic adult participants via the auditory modality, compared with a group of chronological age matched controls and a group of reading-level matched controls. The priming conditions (repetition, morphological, control [phonological]) were manipulated within participants and the group as between-participants. Findings show that, in contrast to visual priming, both repetition and morphological priming effects were at magnitudes comparable to those of the chronological age matched and reading-level matched controls. The strong morphological priming suggests that when the words are presented via the auditory modality, students with dyslexia are able to extract and activate the roots of the prime and the target words. The abovementioned studies demonstrate that the dyslexic children have deficient morphological processing compared to normal readers. They are insensitive to the internal structure of words and have difficulty breaking words up into morphological segments. However, a study on French children with dyslexia (Quémart & Casalis, 2015) demonstrate that these children utilize the presence of a morphologically related prime when processing a target word and that this processing contrasts with priming based on form or meaning overlap alone. In other words, despite their difficulties in decoding, they are able process morphemic units. The aim of the study presented here was thus to examine morphological processing in dyslexic children and to extend the investigation to clarify the locus of the failure in morphological processing in children. The main question addressed here was whether the absence of visual morphological decomposition might reflect a modality-based impairment, as shown previously regarding dyslexic adults. Morphological awareness in dyslexia Morphological awareness is defined as the capacity to reflect on and explicitly manipulate the smallest meaningful units or morphemes in a word (Carlisle, 1995). It contributes to decoding, word recognition, and reading comprehension (Deacon & Kirby, 2004; Nagy, Berninger, & Abbott, 2006; Schiff, Schwartz-Nahshon, & Nagar, 2011). However, recent models of reading comprehension suggest a two-way association between children’s morphological awareness, reading comprehension (Kieffer, Deacon, & Laroche, 2014; Perfetti, Landi, & Oakhill, 2005), and accuracy (Deacon, Benere, SCIENTIFIC STUDIES OF READING 141