Many studies have shown that, while reading, the brain works a sort of decomposing process of words, reducing them to its morphemes. Moreover, many studies have shown that morphological awareness, which is the ability to reflect upon the structure of words, may contribute to reading in Brazilian Portuguese. The present study investigated morphological priming in children and evaluated the correlation between morphological priming and morphological awareness scores. One hundred and forty-one children took part in this research: 35 second graders, 33 third graders, 33 fourth graders, and 40 fifth graders. They performed a lexical decision task (LDT) and morphological awareness task. Results indicate that as early as the second grade, children show some degree of morphological priming effects. In addition, children from the fifth grade presented morphological priming effects similar to those of a skilled reader. No correlations between morphological awareness scores and morphological priming effects were found.

Studies have provided evidence that morphological awareness contributes to word reading in opaque languages such as English. However, this relationship is not yet established for Brazilian Portuguese, a much less opaque language. The present study performed a longitudinal investigation of the relationship between morphological awareness and word reading in 162 children from 2nd to 5th grades of elementary school. The children were evaluated in the final quarter of the respective school year (time 1) and 1 year later (time 2). Hierarchical regression analyses controlling for intelligence, phonological awareness, and phonological working memory were conducted. The hierarchical regression analyses were followed up by cross-lagged panel correlations, and both results converged to word reading measured in the 2nd and 3rd grades contributing to morphological awareness 1 year later. In addition, morphological awareness measured in the 4th grade contributed to word reading 1 year later. The greater transparency of Brazilian Portuguese may make morphological awareness less important for word reading in the early grades; however, in older children, morphological awareness is important for word reading performance.

Resumo: Neste artigo, avaliou-se a contribuição da consciência morfológica (CM) para a leitura no português brasileiro. Participaram do estudo 141 crianças do 2º ao 5º ano do Ensino Fundamental, que foram testadas nas habilidades de leitura, inteligência, memória de trabalho fonológica (MTF), CM e consciência fonológica (CF). Cada criança foi avaliada individualmente em duas sessões de, aproximadamente, 15 minutos. Análises de regressão hierárquica foram realizadas, sendo controladas a idade e a inteligência, enquanto entraram em diferentes momentos na equação as variáveis: CF, MTF e CM. A MTF não contribuiu para a leitura e a CM contribuiu para a leitura apenas no 4º e 5º anos, enquanto a CF contribuiu em todos os anos. Embora a CF tenha contribuído em todos os anos escolares, no 4º e 5º anos a contribuição da CM para a leitura foi maior. Discutiu--se a relevância de se estimular a CM e a CF durante o processo de alfabetização.Palavras-chave: consciência morfológica; consciência morfossintática; leitura; alfabetização; metalinguagem. THE CONTRIBUTION OF MORPHOLOGICAL AWARENESS TO READING IN BRAZILIAN PORTUGUESEAbstract: The present work evaluated the contribution of morphological awareness for reading in Brazilian Portuguese. One hundred and forty-one Brazilian children from second to fifth Elementary School years took part in this study. We have assessed their reading skills, intelligence, phonological working memory (PWM), morphological awareness (MA), and phonological awareness (PA). Each child was assessed individually in two sessions of fifteen minutes. We have conducted hierarchical regression analyses controlling for intelligence and age with PWM, PA, and MA entering in the investigation in different steps. PWM did not contribute to reading. MA added for reading only in 4th and 5th years. PA contributed for reading both in 2nd and 3rd years and in 4th and 5th years. Although PA provided for reading in all school years, MA had a more significant contribution for reading in 4th and 5th years. We have discussed the relevance of including MA and PA stimulation during reading instruction.

Norms for visual stimuli are critical for designing reliable psychological and neuroscientific studies. However, such normative sets of stimuli are scarce for the Brazilian population. Here, we report norms for the Bank of Standardized Stimuli (BOSS) for Brazilian college students. Sixty-five Brazilian university students rated the initial normative set of BOSS images for familiarity and visual complexity, and produced a name for each object. Data analysis focused on comparing the present norms to prior BOSS norms (English-Canadian, French-Canadian, and Thai) across four normative dimensions: familiarity, visual complexity, modal name agreement, and H value, and considered these dimensions according to whether items pertained to living or non-living domains. Correlation analyses revealed that the present norms show strong similarities to prior BOSS norms, although objects were scored as more familiar in the Brazilian relative to all prior norms, especially relative to the Thai norms. In addition, familiarity was greater for living than for non-living items in the English- and French-Canadian norms, but such difference was absent in the Brazilian and Thai norms, suggesting that familiarity is more strongly affected by culture than by semantic domain. In sum, even when cultural differences are considered, the current study reveals that the images of the BOSS data set are in general well known for Brazilians, demonstrating that they can be useful for psychological and neuroscientific research in Brazil.