An investigation of morphological awareness and processing in adults with low literacy

Abstract

Morphological awareness, which is an understanding of how words can be broken down into smaller units of meaning such as roots, prefixes, and suffixes, has emerged as an important contributor to word reading and comprehension skills. The first aim of the current study was to investigate the contribution of morphological awareness independent of phonological awareness and decoding to the reading comprehension abilities of adults with low literacy. Results indicated that morphological awareness was a significant unique predictor of reading comprehension. A second aim of the study was to investigate the processing of morphologically complex words of adults with low literacy in both an oral reading passage and a single-word naming task. Adults’ accuracy and response times were measured on different types of morphologically complex words and compared with control words matched on frequency in both the passage and the naming tasks. Results revealed that adults were vulnerable to morphological complexity: they performed more accurately and faster on matched control words versus morphologically complex word types. The educational implications for Adult Basic Education programs are discussed.

Examining the Relationships of Component Reading Skills to Reading Comprehension in Struggling Adult Readers

“…Morphological awareness had the strongest relationship with reading comprehension ( r = .59) and was significantly more related to reading comprehension than phonological awareness ( r = .34) and RAN ( r = .15). This finding is consistent with Tighe and Binder (2014) who reported that morphological awareness accounted for an additional 37% of the reading comprehension variance after controlling for phonological awareness. However, we were unable to determine significance among morphological awareness and orthographic knowledge as well as phonological awareness and orthographic knowledge.…”

“…None of the research has investigated the unique and shared contributions of all three metalinguistic skills to reading skills; however, these constructs have been considered separately (or included two of the constructs) across several studies. For example, three recent studies have reported that morphological awareness is an important predictor of ABE students’ reading comprehension skills after controlling for phonological awareness (Tighe & Binder, 2014), decoding (To et al, in press), and oral vocabulary knowledge (Tighe, 2012). Phonological awareness has been reported as an important predictor of reading comprehension (Thompkins & Binder, 2003; Tighe & Binder, 2014), word reading skills (Greenberg, Ehri, & Perin, 1997) and a composite score of word reading, fluency, and comprehension skills (Binder et al, 2011).…”

“…For example, three recent studies have reported that morphological awareness is an important predictor of ABE students’ reading comprehension skills after controlling for phonological awareness (Tighe & Binder, 2014), decoding (To et al, in press), and oral vocabulary knowledge (Tighe, 2012). Phonological awareness has been reported as an important predictor of reading comprehension (Thompkins & Binder, 2003; Tighe & Binder, 2014), word reading skills (Greenberg, Ehri, & Perin, 1997) and a composite score of word reading, fluency, and comprehension skills (Binder et al, 2011). Similarly, orthographic knowledge has emerged as an important contributor to adults’ reading comprehension (Thompkins & Binder, 2003), word reading skills (Greenberg et al, 1997) and a composite score of reading abilities (word reading, fluency and comprehension) (Binder et al, 2011).…”

“…Thus, we decided to include the four separate studies from Herman et al (2013) that met our inclusion criteria: Binder et al, (2011), Fracasso et al (in press), Tighe and Binder, (2014), and To et al (in press). …”

The Contributions of Phonological and Morphological Awareness to Literacy Skills in the Adult Basic Education Population

“…This finding supports the notion that morphological awareness contributes to reading comprehension by aiding vocabulary, since the best predictor of vocabulary was morphological awareness (Keiffer, 2009; Nagy et al, 2006). In the current study, when vocabulary was not entered into the regression model, morphological awareness was a significant predictor of comprehension, and this finding is consistent with Tighe and Binder (2014), which was the first study to document the role of morphological awareness in reading comprehension for adults who were enrolled in ABE programs. Our finding further supports previous research that morphological awareness does aid comprehension through vocabulary (Fowler & Liberman, 1995; Kuo & Anderson, 2006; McBride-Chang et al, 2008; Shankweiler et al, 1995).…”