Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-rdxmf Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-28T04:13:07.589Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Morpheme frequency effects in Dutch complex word reading: A developmental perspective

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 June 2011

LUDO VERHOEVEN  and
ROB SCHREUDER
LUDO VERHOEVEN*
Affiliation:
Radboud University Nijmegen
ROB SCHREUDER
Affiliation:
Radboud University Nijmegen
*
ADDRESS FOR CORRESPONDENCE Ludo Verhoeven, Behavioural Science Institute, Radboud University Nijmegen, Montessorilaan 3, 6525 HR Nijmegen, The Netherlands. E-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This study examined to what extent advanced and beginning readers, including dyslexic readers of Dutch, make use of morphological access units in the reading of polymorphemic words. Therefore, experiments were carried out in which the role of singular root form frequency in reading plural word forms was investigated in a lexical decision task with both adults and children. Twenty-three adult readers, 37 8-year-old children from Grade 3, 43 11-year-old children from Grade 6, and 33 11-year-old dyslexic readers were presented with a lexical decision task in which we contrasted plural word forms with a high versus low frequency of the singular root form. For the adults, it was found that the accuracy and speed of lexical decision is determined by the surface frequency of the plural word form. The frequency of the constituent root form played a role as well, but in the low-frequency plural words only. Furthermore, a strong developmental effect regarding the accuracy and speed of reading plural word forms was found. An effect of plural word form frequency on word identification was evidenced in all groups. The singular root form frequency also had an impact of the reading of the plural word forms. In the normal reading and dyslexic children, plurals with a high-frequency singular root form were read more accurately and faster than plurals with a low singular root frequency. It can be concluded that constituent morphemes have an impact on the reading of polymorphemic words. The results can be explained in the light of a word experience model leaving room for morphological constituency to play a role in the lexical access of complex words as a function of reading skill and experience and word and morpheme frequency.

Type
Articles
Information
Applied Psycholinguistics , Volume 32 , Issue 3 , July 2011 , pp. 483 - 498
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Andrews, S. (1989). Frequency and neighbourhood effects on lexical access: Activation or search? Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition, 15, 802–814.Google Scholar
Baayen, R. H., Piepenbrock, R., & van Rijn, H. (1993). The CELEX lexical database [CD]. Philadelphia, PA: Linguistic DataConsortium.Google Scholar
Bertram, R., Baayen, R. H., & Schreuder, R. (2000). Effects of family size for complex words. Journal of Memory and Language, 42, 390–405.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carlisle, J. F. (1995). Morphological awareness and early reading achievement. In Feldman, L. (Ed.), Morphological aspects of language processing (pp. 189–209). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Carlisle, J. F. (2000). Awareness of the structure and meaning of morphologically complex words: Impact on reading. Reading and Writing, 12, 169–190.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carlisle, J. F., & Nomanbhoy, D. (1993). Phonological and morphological awareness in first graders. Applied Psycholinguistics, 14, 177–195.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Coltheart, M., Rastle, K., Perry, C., Langdon, R., & Ziegler, J. (2001). DRC: A dual route cascaded model of visual word recognition and reading aloud. Psychological Review, 108, 204–256.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Duncan, L. G., & Seymour, P. H. K. (2003). How do children read multisyllabic words? Some preliminary observations. Journal of Research in Reading, 26, 101–120.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ford, M., Marslen–Wilson, W. D., & Davis, M. H. (2003). Morphology and frequency: Contrasting methodologies. In Baayen, R. H. & Schreuder, R. (Eds.), Morphological structure in language processing (pp. 89–124). Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hinton, G. E., McClelland, J. L., & Rumelhart, D. E. (1986). Distributed representations. In Rumelhart, D. E., McClelland, J. L., & the Group, PDP Research (Eds.), Parallel distributed processing: Explorations in the microstructure of cognition: Vol. 1. Foundations (pp. 77–109). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Leong, C. K. (2000). Rapid processing of base and derived forms of words and Grades 4, 5 and 6 children's spelling. Reading and Writing, 12, 169–190.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McCann, R., & Besner, D. (1987). Reading pseudohomophones: Implications for models of pronunciation assembly and the locus of word frequency in naming. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 13, 14–24.Google Scholar
Messbauer, V. C., & de Jong, P. F. (2003). Word, nonword, and visual paired associate learning in Dutch dyslexic children. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 84, 77–96.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Nagy, W., Diakidoy, I., & Anderson, R. (1993). The acquisition of morphology: Learning the contribution of suffixes to the meaning of derivates. Journal of Reading Behavior, 25, 155–170.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Perfetti, C. (1998). Learning to read. In Reitsma, P. & Verhoeven, L. (Eds.), Literacy problems and interventions (pp. 15–48). Dordrecht: Kluwer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Perfetti, C. A. (1992). The representation problem in reading acquisition. In Gough, P. B., Ehri, L. C., & Treiman, R. (Eds.), Reading acquisition (pp. 145–174). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Plaut, D. C., & Gonnerman, L. M. (2000). Are nonsemantic morphological effects incompatible with a distributed connectionist approach to lexical processing? Language and Cognitive Processing, 15, 445–485.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Plaut, D. C., McClelland, J. L., Seidenberg, M. S., & Patterson, K. (1996). Understanding normal and impaired word reading: Computational principles in quasi-regular domains. Psychological Review, 103, 56–115.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ramus, F. (2003). Developmental dyslexia: Specific phonological deficit or general sensorimotor dysfunction? Current Opinion in Neurobiology, 13, 212–218.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Rastle, K., & Coltheart, M. (2000). Lexical and nonlexical print-to-sound translation of disyllabic words and nonwords. Journal of Memory and Language, 42, 342–364.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rastle, K., Tyler, L. K., & Marslen-Wilson, W. D. (2006). New evidence for morphological errors in deep dyslexia. Brain and Language, 97, 189–199.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Reichle, E. D., & Perfetti, C. A. (2003). Morphology in word identification: A word-experience model that accounts for morpheme frequency effects. Scientific Studies of Reading, 7, 219–237.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schaerlaekens, A., Kohnstamm, D., & Lejaegere, M. (1999). Streeflijst woordenschat voor zesjarigen. Lisse: Swets & Zeitlinger.Google Scholar
Schreuder, R., & Baayen, R. H. (1997). How complex simplex word scan be. Journal of Memory and Language, 37, 118–139.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Seidenberg, M. S., & Gonnerman, L. M. (2000). Explaining derivational morphology as the convergence of codes. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 4, 353–361.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Share, D. L. (1995). Phonological recoding and self-teaching: sine qua non of reading acquisition. Cognition, 55, 151–218.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Snow, C. E., Burns, M. S., & Griffin, P. (1998). Preventing reading difficulties in young children. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.Google Scholar
Staphorsius, G., Krom, R., & Geus, K. de (1988). Frequenties van woordvormen en letterposities in jeugdliteratuur. Arnhem, The Netherlands: Cito.Google Scholar
Torgeson, J. T. (2001). The theory and practice of intervention: comparing outcomes from prevention and remediation studies. In Fawcett, A. (Ed.), Dyslexia, theory and good practice (pp. 203–217). London: Whurr.Google Scholar
Verhoeven, L. (1991). Drie-minuten-toets [Word Decoding Test]. Arnhem, The Netherlands: Cito.Google Scholar
Verhoeven, L., & Perfetti, C. A. (2003). The role of morphology in learning to read. Scientific Studies of Reading, 7, 209–217.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Verhoeven, L., Schreuder, R., & Baayen, H. (2006). Learnability of graphotactic rules in visual word identification. Learning and Instruction, 16, 538–548.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Verhoeven, L., & Snow, C. (2001). Literacy and motivation. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Verhoeven, L., & van Leeuwe, J. (2009). Modeling the growth of word decoding skills: Evidence from Dutch. Scientific Studies of Reading, 13, 205–223.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ziegler, J. C., & Goswami, U. (2005). Reading acquisition, developmental dyslexia and skilled reading across languages: A psycholinguistic grain size theory. Psychological Bulletin, 131, 3–29.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed