Effects of Affix Type and Base Word Transparency on Students' Performance on Different Morphological Awareness Measures.

PURPOSE: We examined whether affix type and base word transparency explained variation in third- through sixth-grade students' performance on a number of morphological awareness tasks. METHOD: Third- through sixth-grade students (n > 500 at each grade) completed morphological awareness tasks from the Morphological Awareness Test for Reading and Spelling, which represent the ways individuals may use their morphological awareness to support reading and spelling. Explanatory item response models were used to understand the role of affix type and base word transparency on students' performance on six morphological awareness tasks. RESULTS: For all grades, 73%-83% of variance in students' performance was due to differences across individual items. Furthermore, when task effects, affix type, and base word transparency were included simultaneously in the model, affix type was not a significant predictor; there was a significant effect of base word transparency and task. Specifically, the probability of a correct response was greater on task items in which inflected or derived words were transparent with their base word (e.g., friend > friendly) compared to items in which there was a shift in both the phonological and orthographic aspects of the base word (e.g., attend > attention). CONCLUSIONS: These findings emphasize the importance of considering base word transparency when assessing students' morphological awareness skills with less emphasis on affix type, at least for third- through sixth-grade students. Our results also point to the importance of administering a variety of morphological awareness tasks to fully capture an individual's morphological awareness skills. Collectively, researchers and practitioners should ensure assessment items on multiple measures of morphological awareness vary in their base word transparency to potentially capture a range of student performances.

Morphological Awareness Performance Profiles of First- Through Sixth-Grade Students.

PURPOSE: We examined whether diverse profiles of strengths and weaknesses would emerge when assessing different aspects of morphological awareness in first- through sixth-grade students using a recently developed standardized test, the Morphological Awareness Test for Reading and Spelling (MATRS; Apel et al., 2021). METHOD: Four thousand fifty-nine first- through sixth-grade students completed the eight morphological awareness tasks of the MATRS. The eight tasks represent the multiple ways that morphological awareness impacts both spoken and written language skills for the English language. Exploratory finite mixture models estimated the number of latent subgroups that best reflected heterogeneity in task-level performance by grade level. Specific profiles were chosen that demonstrated strong reliability and included a set of tasks that were consistent between first- and second-grade students and between third- and sixth-grade students. RESULTS: Different performance profiles emerged when the students completed multiple morphological awareness tasks. At each of the six grades (first through sixth), clusters of students performed differentially on specific tasks. CONCLUSIONS: The findings demonstrate that students can differ in patterns of strength and weaknesses of their morphological awareness given a range of tasks that assess different aspects of morphological awareness. The clinical implications of these findings suggest that by identifying students struggling in specific areas of morphological awareness, clinicians can develop and implement specific prescriptive instructional plans.

The Relation Between a Systematic Analysis of Spelling and Orthographic and Phonological Awareness Skills in First-Grade Children.

Purpose As an initial step in determining whether a spelling error analysis might be useful in measuring children's linguistic knowledge, the relation between the frequency of types of scores from a spelling error analysis and children's performance on measures of phonological and orthographic pattern awareness was examined. Method The spellings of first-grade children with typical spoken language skills were scored using the Spelling Sensitivity System (Masterson & Apel, 2010a); words were parsed into elements based on phonemes and then assigned a score based on the linguistic skills represented in the spelling. The children also completed more traditional measures of phonological and orthographic knowledge: an elision task and an orthographic pattern awareness task. Results There was a moderate negative correlation between number of elements omitted in the children's spellings (e.g., the child did not represent a phoneme with a letter[s] and performance on the phonological awareness task). There also was a moderate negative correlation between frequency of orthographically based spelling errors (e.g., spelling an element with a letter[s] that could never represent that sound in English) and performance on the orthographic pattern and phonological awareness measures. Conclusions These findings suggest that specific types of scores on the spelling error analysis provided information about the children's phonological awareness and orthographic knowledge. They also support continued investigations on the use of a systematic spelling error analysis for measuring phonological awareness and orthographic knowledge and highlight the potential utility of the analysis procedure in the educational setting.

Morphological Awareness Skills of Second- and Third-Grade Students With and Without Speech Sound Disorders.

Purpose Morphological awareness is the ability to consciously manipulate the smallest units of meaning in language. Morphological awareness contributes to success with literacy skills for children with typical language and those with language impairment. However, little research has focused on the morphological awareness skills of children with speech sound disorders (SSD), who may be at risk for literacy impairments. No researcher has examined the morphological awareness skills of children with SSD and compared their skills to children with typical speech using tasks representing a comprehensive definition of morphological awareness, which was the main purpose of this study. Method Thirty second- and third-grade students with SSD and 30 with typical speech skills, matched on age and receptive vocabulary, completed four morphological awareness tasks and measures of receptive vocabulary, real-word reading, pseudoword reading, and word-level spelling. Results Results indicated there was no difference between the morphological awareness skills of students with and without SSD. Although morphological awareness was moderately to strongly related to the students' literacy skills, performance on the morphological awareness tasks contributed little to no additional variance to the children's real-word reading and spelling skills beyond what was accounted for by pseudoword reading. Conclusions Findings suggest that early elementary-age students with SSD may not present with concomitant morphological awareness difficulties and that the morphological awareness skills of these students may not play a unique role in their word-level literacy skills. Limitations and suggestions for future research on the morphological awareness skills of children with SSD are discussed.

The Relation Between Linguistic Awareness Skills and Spelling in Adults: A Comparison Among Scoring Procedures.

Purpose Spelling is a skill that relies on an individual's linguistic awareness, the ability to overtly manipulate language. The ability to accurately spell is important for academic and career success into adulthood. The spelling skills of adults have received some attention in the literature, but there is limited information regarding which approach for analyzing adults' spelling is optimal for guiding instruction or intervention for those who struggle. Thus, we aimed to examine the concurrent validity of four different scoring methods for measuring adults' spellings (a dichotomous scoring method and three continuous methods) and to determine whether adults' linguistic awareness skills differentially predict spelling outcomes based on the scoring method employed. Method Sixty undergraduate college students who were determined to be average readers as measured by a word reading and contextual word reading task were administered a spelling task as well as morphological, orthographic, phonemic, and syntactic awareness tasks. Results All four scoring methods were highly correlated suggesting high concurrent validity among the measures. Two linguistic awareness skills, morphological awareness and syntactic awareness, predicted spelling performance on both the dichotomous and continuous scoring methods. Contrastively, phonemic awareness and orthographic awareness predicted spelling performance only when spelling was scored using a continuous measure error analysis. Conclusions The results of this study confirm that multiple linguistic awareness skills are important for spelling in adults who are average readers. The results also highlight the need for using continuous measures of spelling when planning intervention or instruction, particularly in the areas of orthographic and phonemic awareness.

Orthographic Fast-Mapping Across Time in 5- and 6-Year-Old Children.

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to examine the orthographic fast-mapping abilities of 5- and 6-year-old children across time to determine (a) growth in the ability to quickly acquire mental images of written words, (b) the effect of words' statistical regularities on the learning of written word images across time, (c) whether the statistical regularities of words impact children's eye movements during an orthographic fast-mapping task, and (d) the relation among written word learning and future literacy skills. Method: Twenty-eight 5- and 6-year-old children viewed and listened to 12 short stories while their eye movements were recorded across 2 time points (approximately 3 months apart). At each time point, objects in the stories represented 12 novel pseudowords differing in their phonotactic and orthotactic probabilities. After viewing each story, the children were asked to spell and identify the target pseudowords; they also completed a battery of literacy measures. Results: The children were able to quickly acquire mental orthographic representations of the novel written pseudowords as evidenced by their ability to identify and spell the target pseudowords after viewing the stories. This ability was related to future literacy performance and significantly improved over time. Performance on the orthographic fast-mapping tasks and the children's eye movements at Time 2 were influenced by the words' linguistic properties. Conclusions: This study adds to accumulating evidence that orthographic fast-mapping is largely influenced by the orthotactic probabilities of words. These findings, taken together with those from previous investigations, provide a rich amount of evidence indicating that children are statistical learners when developing their orthographic knowledge.

Affix Meaning Knowledge in First Through Third Grade Students.

PURPOSE: We examined grade-level differences in 1st- through 3rd-grade students' performance on an experimenter-developed affix meaning task (AMT) and determined whether AMT performance explained unique variance in word-level reading and reading comprehension, beyond other known contributors to reading development. METHOD: Forty students at each grade level completed an assessment battery that included measures of phonological awareness, receptive vocabulary, word-level reading, reading comprehension, and affix meaning knowledge. RESULTS: On the AMT, 1st-grade students were significantly less accurate than 2nd- and 3rd-grade students; there was no significant difference in performance between the 2nd- and 3rd-grade students. Regression analyses revealed that the AMT accounted for 8% unique variance of students' performance on word-level reading measures and 6% unique variance of students' performance on the reading comprehension measure, after age, phonological awareness, and receptive vocabulary were explained. CONCLUSION: These results provide initial information on the development of affix meaning knowledge via an explicit measure in 1st- through 3rd-grade students and demonstrate that affix meaning knowledge uniquely contributes to the development of reading abilities above other known literacy predictors. These findings provide empirical support for how students might use morphological problem solving to read unknown multimorphemic words successfully.

Linguistic Feature Development Across Grades and Genre in Elementary Writing.

PURPOSE: As children develop skills in writing across academic contexts, clinicians and educators need to have a fundamental understanding of typical writing development as well as valid and reliable assessment methods. The purpose of this study was to examine the progression of linguistic elements in school-age children's narrative and expository writing development. METHOD: Narrative and expository writing samples produced by 89 children in Grades 2 through 4 were analyzed at the microstructure and macrostructure levels. Measures of receptive vocabulary, word-level reading, and reading comprehension were obtained. RESULTS: Exploratory factor analyses revealed 4 microstructure factors (e.g., productivity, grammatical complexity, grammatical accuracy, and lexical density) and 1 macrostructure factor (e.g., a combination of organization, text structure, and cohesion). Multivariate analyses of covariance with reading comprehension as a covariate showed that productivity and macrostructure were sensitive to grade-level and genre differences and that expository grammatical complexity was sensitive to grade-level differences. CONCLUSIONS: Findings are discussed in light of grade-level standards for narrative and expository writing and current practices in writing assessment. Multiple suggestions are offered for clinical and educational implications, and specific directions are provided for future research.

Comparing the spelling and reading abilities of students with cochlear implants and students with typical hearing.

The purpose of this study was to determine whether students with and without hearing loss (HL) differed in their spelling abilities and, specifically, in the underlying linguistic awareness skills that support spelling ability. Furthermore, we examined whether there were differences between the two groups in the relationship between reading and spelling. We assessed the spelling, word-level reading, and reading comprehension skills of nine students with cochlear implants and nine students with typical hearing who were matched for reading age. The students' spellings were analyzed to determine whether the misspellings were due to errors with phonemic awareness, orthographic pattern or morphological awareness, or poor mental graphemic representations. The students with HL demonstrated markedly less advanced spelling abilities than the students with typical hearing. For the students with HL, the misspellings were primarily due to deficiencies in orthographic pattern and morphological awareness. Correlations between measures of spelling and both real word reading and reading comprehension were lower for the students with HL. With additional investigations using a similar approach to spelling analysis that captures the underlying causes for spelling errors, researchers will better understand the linguistic awareness abilities that students with HL bring to the task of reading and spelling.

Using morphological awareness instruction to improve written language skills.

PURPOSE: Written English is a morphophonemic language. Researchers have documented that a conscious awareness of the morphological structure of English morphology is predictive of students' written language skills and that morphological awareness instruction leads to improvements in morphological awareness and in other written language skills. The purpose of this tutorial is to provide specific information to clinical scientists and other educators for integrating morphological awareness instruction into their written language instruction. METHOD: The authors first define morphological awareness and provide an overview of the research on the effects of morphological awareness intervention on improving morphological awareness and written language skills. Measures used to assess morphological awareness ability are then discussed, followed by suggestions for how clinical scientists and other educators can provide morphological awareness instruction to improve the written language skills of the students they serve. CONCLUSION: By integrating morphological awareness instruction into the services they provide, clinical scientists and other educators will be providing their students with a strong tool to aid written language skills.

Clinical scientists improving clinical practices: in thoughts and actions.

PURPOSE: In this article, the author comments on aspects of Kamhi's (2014) article, which caused the author to think more deeply about definitions of language, theories of learning, and how these two core components of intervention prepare clinical scientists as they search the literature for new knowledge. Interprofessional collaborative practice as a model for team-based intervention in school settings is also discussed. METHOD: The article addresses aspects of Kamhi's article that aligned or did not align with the author's definition of language and theory of learning and explains why considering these alignments is important for clinical scientists. Two challenges to staying current with the research base are also described, and suggestions are offered for addressing these challenges. Finally, the article provides an overview of interprofessional collaborative practice. CONCLUSION: Clinical scientists should continue to strive to use their knowledge of what language is and how it is learned, combined with the best available scientific information, to best serve their clients. Combining their thoughts and actions, they undoubtedly will continuously improve their clinical practices.

Examining the use of spoken dialect indices with African American children in the southern United States.

PURPOSE: To examine the utility of different dialect indices that have been used to characterize the Non-Mainstream American English (NMAE) dialect of African American children. The relationships among 4 popular dialect indices were examined and compared with the results of a standardized tool used to classify the language variation of child speakers at 3 different grade levels. METHOD: The authors used listener judgment ratings, 2 dialect density measures obtained from a narrative sample, a standardized tool (Part 1 of the Diagnostic Evaluation of Language Variation-Screener Test [DELV-ST; Seymour, Roper, & deVilliers, 2003]), and dialect variation scores (DVAR) obtained from the DELV-ST to characterize 113 African American children's spoken production of NMAE. RESULTS: Grade-level effects on NMAE varied depending on the index used to measure dialect production. All of the dialect indices under investigation were related to one another. DELV-ST classification group effects were present on all but 1 of the indices used to capture NMAE. CONCLUSIONS: Newer measures of NMAE, such as the DELV-ST and DVAR scores, are comparable to older measures such as dialect density measures and listener judgment ratings. Like listener judgment ratings, the DELV-ST and DVAR scores offer clinicians and researchers alike a quicker alternative to dialect density measures for confirming and quantifying the spoken production of NMAE dialect. The present findings confirm that, depending on the type of data collected and questions posed, researchers and clinicians alike are able to choose from multiple, valid, and reliable measures of non-mainstream dialect use.

Comprehension Tools for Teachers: Reading for Understanding from Prekindergarten through Fourth Grade.

This paper describes the theoretical framework, as well as the development and testing of the intervention, Comprehension Tools for Teachers (CTT), which is composed of eight component interventions targeting malleable language and reading comprehension skills that emerging research indicates contribute to proficient reading for understanding for prekindergarteners through fourth graders. Component interventions target processes considered largely automatic as well as more reflective processes, with interacting and reciprocal effects. Specifically, we present component interventions targeting cognitive, linguistic, and text-specific processes, including morphological awareness, syntax, mental-state verbs, comprehension monitoring, narrative and expository text structure, enacted comprehension, academic knowledge, and reading to learn from informational text. Our aim was to develop a tool set composed of intensive meaningful individualized small group interventions. We improved feasibility in regular classrooms through the use of design-based iterative research methods including careful lesson planning, targeted scripting, pre- and postintervention proximal assessments, and technology. In addition to the overall framework, we discuss seven of the component interventions and general results of design and efficacy studies.

Morphological awareness intervention with kindergartners and first and second grade students from low SES homes: a small efficacy study.

We investigated the efficacy of a morphological awareness intervention on the morphological awareness and reading skills of students from low-socioeconomic-status homes; we also examined whether the intervention was similarly effective for intervention students who differed in their initial morphological awareness abilities. The 8-week intervention was designed to increase awareness of affixes and the relations between base words and their inflected and derived forms for kindergarteners (n = 27) and first- (n = 22) and second-grade (n = 26) students. Students randomly assigned to the small group intervention were provided instruction four times a week, 25 min a day, whereas students assigned to the control group received "business as usual." Kindergarten and first- and second-grade students receiving the intervention showed statistically significant gains in morphological awareness with large effect sizes on most measures. Students in all three grades who received the intervention demonstrated nonsignificant gains in literacy abilities with null to small effect sizes. Further, students with low morphological awareness abilities at the onset of the study demonstrated similar gains from the intervention as their peers with typical morphological awareness abilities. Our results suggest that explicit morphological awareness instruction may produce gains of practical importance to young elementary students at risk for future literacy difficulties.

The relation of linguistic awareness and vocabulary to word reading and spelling for first-grade students participating in response to intervention.

PURPOSE: The relations of phonological, orthographic, and morphological awareness and vocabulary to word reading and spelling were examined for 304 first-grade children who were receiving differentiated instruction in a Response to Intervention (RtI) model of instruction. METHOD: First-grade children were assessed on their phonological, orthographic, and morphological awareness; expressive vocabulary; word reading; and spelling. Year-end word reading and spelling were outcome variables, and phonological, orthographic, and morphological awareness; expressive vocabulary; and RtI status (Tiers 1, 2, & 3) were predictor variables. RESULTS: The 3 linguistic awareness skills were unique predictors of word reading, and phonological and orthographic awareness were unique predictors of spelling. The contributions that these linguistic awareness skills and vocabulary made to word reading and spelling did not differ by children's RtI tier status. CONCLUSION: These results, in conjunction with previous studies, suggest that even beginning readers and spellers draw on multiple linguistic awareness skills for their word reading and spelling regardless of their level of literacy abilities. Educational implications are discussed.

Morphological awareness intervention with kindergartners and first- and second-grade students from low socioeconomic status homes: a feasibility study.

PURPOSE: The effect of a morphological awareness intervention on the morphological awareness and literacy skills of students from low socioeconomic status homes was investigated. METHOD: A 9-week intervention designed to increase awareness of affixes and the relations between base words and their inflected and derived forms was conducted with students in kindergarten (n = 19), 1st grade (n = 21), and 2nd grade (n = 21). Groups of 4-5 students were provided with instruction 4 times a week for 25 min a day. RESULTS: Results showed medium to very large clinically significant gains in morphological awareness and literacy abilities (ds = 0.29-2.96) across all participants. CONCLUSION: The results of this feasibility study suggest that morphological awareness instruction that requires students to analyze, recognize, orally produce, and determine the spelling patterns of multimorphemic words leads to therapeutic effects within a population of young students who are at risk for future reading difficulties. Initial clinical implications, limitations of the study, and research suggestions are discussed.

What is orthographic knowledge?

PURPOSE: Orthographic knowledge refers to the information that is stored in memory that tells us how to represent spoken language in written form. Unfortunately, terms used to talk about orthographic knowledge and the two individual components that contribute to it have varied widely in the literature. Thus, consensus on the term, its meaning, and the tasks used to assess orthographic knowledge is needed. METHOD: In this tutorial, the problems and inconsistencies in terms and tasks used to define and measure orthographic knowledge are reviewed, and suggestions for using specific terms are offered. Additionally, orthographic knowledge development, considerations of its role in literacy development, and its independence from other factors that contribute to literacy development are discussed. Finally, ideas for overcoming current obstacles in discussions of orthographic knowledge and suggestions for future research endeavors are offered. CONCLUSION: With consensus on what orthographic knowledge is and how it should be measured, practitioners should be better prepared for assessing orthographic knowledge and implementing instructional practices accordingly.

Contributions of morphological awareness skills to word-level reading and spelling in first-grade children with and without speech sound disorder.

PURPOSE: In this study, the authors compared the morphological awareness abilities of children with speech sound disorder (SSD) and children with typical speech skills and examined how morphological awareness ability predicted word-level reading and spelling performance above other known contributors to literacy development. METHOD: Eighty-eight first-grade students--44 students with SSD and no known history of language deficiencies, and 44 students with typical speech and language skills--completed an assessment battery designed to measure speech sound production, morphological awareness, phonemic awareness, letter-name knowledge, receptive vocabulary, word-level reading, and spelling abilities. RESULTS: The children with SSD scored significantly lower than did their counterparts on the morphological awareness measures as well as on phonemic awareness, word-level reading, and spelling tasks. Regression analyses suggested that morphological awareness predicted significant unique variance on the spelling measure for both groups and on the word-level reading measure for the children with typical skills. CONCLUSION: These results suggest that children with SSD may present with a general linguistic awareness insufficiency, which puts them at risk for difficulties with literacy and literacy-related tasks.

Initial mental graphemic representation acquisition and later literacy achievement in children with language impairment: a longitudinal study.

The purpose of this study was to examine the relation between the ability to quickly acquire initial mental graphemic representations (MGRs) in kindergarten and fourth grade literacy skills in children with typical language (TL) and children with language impairment (LI). The study is a longitudinal extension of a study conducted by Wolter and Apel in which kindergarten children with LI and TL were administered early literacy measures as well as a novel written pseudoword task of MGR learning (spelling and identification of target pseudowords). In the current study (4 years later), the authors administered reading and spelling measures to 37 of the original 45 children (18 children with LI, 19 children with TL). The children with LI performed significantly lower than their peers with TL on all fourth grade literacy measures. For both groups, kindergarten initial MGR acquisition ability significantly related to fourth grade real-word reading and spelling. For the children with LI, kindergarten initial MGR acquisition ability also related to fourth grade pseudoword decoding and reading comprehension. Collectively, the findings suggest that initial MGR learning in kindergarten is an essential skill that may uniquely relate to later literacy abilities.

Science is an attitude: a response to Kamhi.

PURPOSE: I provide alternative views to Kamhi's (2011) assertion that clinical practice cannot be scientific. I also discuss how the field of communication sciences and disorders might encourage scientific thinking about clinical practices in researchers and clinicians. METHOD: Kamhi's three main points for why clinical practice cannot be scientific are discussed, and alternate perspectives are offered. RESULTS: Clinicians and clinical practice can be scientific and can contribute to changes in scientific orthodoxy. CONCLUSION: Science is an attitude that needs to be instilled in future researchers and clinicians during their educational programs. Model clinical scientists should be used as role models when educating these individuals.