Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-lnqnp Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-27T08:23:16.994Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Syllables and morphemes in German reading development: Evidence from second graders, fourth graders, and adults

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 November 2016

JANA HASENÄCKER*
Affiliation:
Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Berlin
SASCHA SCHROEDER
Affiliation:
Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Berlin
*
ADDRESS FOR CORRESPONDENCE Jana Hasenäcker, MPRG Reading Education and Development (REaD), Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Lentzeallee 94, Berlin 14195, Germany. E-mail: [email protected]

Abstract

Children have been found to use units such as syllables and morphemes in fine-grained reading processes, before they transition to a coarse-grained, holistic route. Which units they prefer at different stages in reading development is unresolved. The present study compares the use of syllables and morphemes. Second graders, fourth graders, and adults performed a lexical decision task on multimorphemic and monomorphemic words and pseudowords that were visually disrupted either syllable-congruent or syllable-incongruent (i.e., morpheme-congruent in multimorphemic items). Syllables turned out to be the preferred unit of fine-grained processing for second graders, while fourth graders also used morphemes when morphemes were emphasized by the presentation format. Moreover, the study supports the assumption that children rely more on fine-grained processing, while adults have more coarse-grained processing.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2016 

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

Amenta, S., & Crepaldi, D. (2012). Morphological processing as we know it: An analytical review of morphological effects in visual word identification. Frontiers in Psychology, 3, doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2012.00232 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Anglin, J. M. (1993). Vocabulary development: A morphological analysis. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 58(Serial No. 238).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baayen, R. H. (2008). Analyzing linguistic data. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baayen, R. H., & Milin, P. (2010). Analyzing reaction times. International Journal of Psychological Research, 3, 1228.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baayen, R. H., Davidson, D. J., & Bates, D. M. (2008). Mixed-effects modeling with crossed random effects for subjects and items. Journal of Memory and Language, 53, 390412. doi:10.1016/j.jml.2007.12.005 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bertram, R., Laine, M., & Virkkala, M. M. (2000). The role of derivational morphology in vocabulary acquisition: Get by with a little help from my friends. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, 41, 287296. doi:10.1111/1467-9450.00201 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Beyersmann, E., Castles, A., & Coltheart, M. (2012). Morphological processing during visual word recognition in developing readers: Evidence from masked priming. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 65, 13061326. doi:10.1080/17470218.2012.656661 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Beyersmann, E., Grainger, J., Casalis, S., & Ziegler, J. C. (2015). Effects of reading proficiency on embedded stem priming in primary school children. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 139, 115126. doi:10.1016/j.jecp.2015.06.001 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Burani, C., Marcolini, S., & Stella, G. (2002). How early does morpholexical reading develop in readers of a shallow orthography? Brain and Language, 81, 568586. doi:10.1006/brln.2001.2548 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Carlisle, J. F., & Stone, C. A. (2003). The effects of morphological structure on children's reading of derived words in English. Neuropsychology and Cognition, 22, 2752. doi:10.1007/978-1-4757-3720-2_2 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carlisle, J. F., & Stone, C. A. (2005). Exploring the role of morphemes in word reading. Reading Research Quarterly, 40, 428449. doi:10.1598/rrq.40.4.3 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carreiras, M., Álvarez, C. J., & De Vega, M. (1993). Syllable-frequency and visual word recognition in Spanish. Journal of Memory and Language, 32, 766780. doi:10.1006/jmla.1993.1038 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Casalis, S., Dusautoir, M., Colé, P., & Ducrot, S. (2009). Morphological effects in children word reading: A priming study in fourth graders. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 27, 761766. doi:10.1348/026151008x389575 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chetail, F., & Mathey, S. (2008). The syllable frequency effect in visual recognition of French words: A study in skilled and beginning readers. Reading and Writing, 22, 955973. doi:10.1007/s11145-008-9135-9 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chetail, F., & Mathey, S. (2009). Activation of syllable units during visual recognition of French words in Grade 2. Journal of Child Language, 36, 883894. doi:10.1017/s0305000908009197 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Chetail, F., & Mathey, S. (2012). Effect of syllable congruency in sixth graders in the lexical decision task with masked priming. Scientific Studies of Reading, 16, 537549. doi:10.1080/10888438.2011.607480 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Colé, P., Bouton, S., Leuwers, C., Casalis, S., & Sprenger-Charolles, L. (2011). Stem and derivational-suffix processing during reading by French second- and third-graders. Applied Psycholinguistics, 33, 97120. doi:10.1017/s0142716411000282 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Colé, P., Magnan, A., & Grainger, J. (1999). Syllable-sized units in visual word recognition: Evidence from skilled and beginning readers. Applied Psycholinguistics, 20, 507532. doi:10.1017/s0142716499004038 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Conrad, M., & Jacobs, A. (2004). Replicating syllable frequency effects in Spanish in German: One more challenge to computational models of visual word recognition. Language and Cognitive Processes, 19, 369390. doi:10.1080/01690960344000224 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ehri, L. C. (1995). Phases of development in learning to read words by sight. Journal of Research in Reading, 18, 116125. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9817.1995.tb00077.x CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Forster, K. I., Davis, C., Schoknecht, C., & Carter, R. (1987). Masked priming with graphemically related forms: Repetition or partial activation? Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 39, 211251. doi:10.1080/14640748708401785 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grainger, J., & Ziegler, J. C. (2011). A dual-route approach to orthographic processing. Frontiers in Psychology, 2, 112. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2011.00054 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Häikiö, T., Bertram, R., & Hyönä, J. (2011). The development of whole-word representations in compound word processing: Evidence from eye fixation patterns of elementary school children. Applied Psycholinguistics, 32, 533551. doi:10.1017/S0142716411000208 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Häikiö, T., Bertram, R., & Hyönä, J. (2016). The hyphen as a syllabification cue in reading bisyllabic and multisyllabic words among Finnish 1st and 2nd graders. Reading and Writing, 29, 159182. doi:10.1007/s11145-015-9584-x CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Häikiö, T., Hyönä, J., & Bertram, R. (2015). The role of syllables in word recognition among beginning Finnish readers: Evidence from eye movements during reading. Journal of Cognitive Psychology, 27, 562577. doi:10.1080/20445911.2014.982126 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hautala, J., Aro, M., Eklund, K., Lerkkanen, M.-K., & Lyytinen, H. (2012). The role of letters and syllables in typical and dysfluent reading in a transparent orthography. Reading and Writing, 26, 845864. doi:10.1007/s11145-012-9394-3 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hothorn, T., Bretz, F., & Westfall, P. (2008). Simultaneous inference in general parametric models. Biometrical Journal, 50, 346363. doi:10.1002/bimj.200810425 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Katz, L., & Baldasare, J. (1983). Syllable coding in printed-word recognition by children and adults. Journal of Educational Psychology, 75, 245256. doi:10.1037/0022-0663.75.2.245 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Katz, L., & Feldman, L. B. (1981). Linguistic coding in word recognition: Comparisons between a deep and a shallow orthography. In Lesgold, A. & Perfetti, C. (Eds.), Interactive processes in reading. Hillsdale. NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Katz, L., & Frost, R. (1992). The reading process is different for different orthographies: The orthographic depth hypothesis. In Frost, R. & Katz, L. (Eds.), Orthography, phonology, morphology, and meaning (pp. 6784). Amsterdam: Elsevier North Holland Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lima, S. D., & Pollatsek, A. (1983). Lexical access via an orthographic code? The Basic Orthographic Syllabic Structure (BOSS) reconsidered. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 22, 310332. doi:10.1016/s0022-5371(83)90215-3 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Maïonchi-Pino, N., Magnan, A., & Écalle, J. (2010). Syllable frequency effects in visual word recognition: Developmental approach in French children. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 31, 7082. doi:10.1016/j.appdev.2009.08.003 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Marcolini, S., Traficante, D., Zoccolotti, P., & Burani, C. (2011). Word frequency modulates morpheme-based reading in poor and skilled Italian readers. Applied Psycholinguistics, 32, 513532. doi:10.1017/s0142716411000191 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moll, K., & Landerl, K. (2010). SLRT-II: Lese- und Rechtschreibtest: Weiterentwicklung der Salzburger Lese- und Rechtschreibtests (SLRT): Manual. Bern, Switzerland: Verlag Hans Huber.Google Scholar
O'Connor, R. E., & Forster, K. I. (1981). Criterion bias and search sequence bias in word recognition. Memory & Cognition, 9, 7892. doi:10.3758/bf03196953 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Perfetti, C. A., & Harris, L. N. (2013). Universal reading processes are modulated by language and writing system. Language Learning and Development, 9, 296316. doi:10.1080/15475441.1013.813828 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Prinzmetal, W., Hofmann, H., & Vest, K. (1991). Automatic processes in word perception: An analysis from illusory conjunctions. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 17, 902923. doi:10.1037/0096-1523.17.4.902 Google ScholarPubMed
Quémart, P., Casalis, S., & Colé, P. (2011). The role of form and meaning in the processing of written morphology: A priming study in French developing readers. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 109, 478496. doi:10.1016/j.jecp.2011.02.008 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Quémart, P., Casalis, S., & Duncan, L. G. (2012). Exploring the role of bases and suffixes when reading familiar and unfamiliar words: Evidence from French young readers. Scientific Studies of Reading, 16, 424442. doi:10.1080/10888438.2011.584333 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schroeder, S., Würzner, K.-M., Heister, J., Geyken, A., & Kliegl, R. (2015). childLex: A lexical database for German read by children. Manuscript submitted for publication.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Segbers, J., & Schroeder, S. (2016). How many words do children know? A corpus-based estimation of children's total vocabulary size. Language Testing. Advance online publication. doi:10.1177/0265532216641152 Google Scholar
Seidenberg, M. (2011). Reading in different writing systems: One architecture, multiple solutions. In McCardle, P., Ren, J., & Tzeng, O. (Eds.), Dyslexia across languages: Orthography and the brain–gene–behavior link. Baltimore, MD: Paul Brookes.Google Scholar
Seymour, P. H. K. (2005). Early reading development in European orthographies. In Snowling, M. J. & Hulme, C. (Eds.), The science of reading: A handbook (pp. 296315). London: Blackwell.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Seymour, P. H. K., Aro, M., & Erskine, J. M. (2003). Foundation literacy acquisition in European orthographies. British Journal of Psychology, 94, 143174. doi:10.1348/000712603321661859 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Share, D. L. (1995). Phonological recoding and self-teaching: Sine qua non of reading acquisition. Cognition, 55, 151218. doi:10.1016/0010-0277(94)00645-2 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Spencer, A. (1996). Phonology. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Taft, M. (1979). Recognition of affixed words and the word frequency effect. Memory & Cognition, 7, 263272. doi:10.3758/bf03197599 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Taft, M. (1986). Lexical access codes in visual and auditory word recognition. Language and Cognitive Processes, 1, 297308. doi:10.1080/01690968608404679 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wagner, R. K., & Torgesen, J. K. (1987). The nature of phonological processing and its causal role in the acquisition of reading skills. Psychological Bulletin, 101, 192212. doi:10.1037/0033-2909.101.2.192 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wimmer, H., & Goswami, U. (1994). The influence of orthographic consistency on reading development: Word recognition in English and German children. Cognition, 51, 91103. doi:10.1016/0010-0277(94)90010-8 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ziegler, J. C., & Goswami, U. (2005). Reading acquisition, developmental dyslexia, and skilled reading across languages: A psycholinguistic grain size theory. Psychological Bulletin, 131, 329. doi:10.1037/0033-2909.131.1.3 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed