Do You Use Love to Make it Lovely? The Role of Meaning Overlap across Morphological Relatives in the Development of Morphological Representations.

We examined whether and how the degree of meaning overlap between morphologically related words influences sentence plausibility judgment in children. In two separate studies with kindergarten and second-graders, English-speaking and French-speaking children judged the plausibility of sentences that included two paired target words. Some of these word pairs were morphologically related, across three conditions with differing levels of meaning overlap: low (wait-waiter), moderate (fold-folder) and high (farm-farmer). In another two conditions, word pairs were related only by phonology (rock-rocket) or semantics (car-automobile). Children in both ages and languages demonstrated higher plausibility scores as meaning overlap increased between morphologically related words. Further, kindergarten children rated sentences that included word pairs with phonological overlap as more plausible than second-grade children, while second-grade children rated those with high meaning overlap as more plausible than kindergarten children. We interpret these findings in light of current models of morphological development.

Rhythm in the blood: The influence of rhythm skills on literacy development in third graders.

Several studies have shown the influence of rhythm skills on the processing of written language, especially at the beginning of literacy development. The first objective of this study was to determine the persistence of this link at an advanced grade level. The second objective was to better understand the factors underlying this relationship and, more specifically, to examine the hypothesis of mediation by phonological and/or motor skills. In total, 278 third graders performed literacy tasks (word/pseudoword decoding and spelling), a rhythm production task, two phonological tasks (phonological awareness and rapid automatized naming), and motor tasks. Significant correlations were observed between literacy and each of rhythm skills, phonological skills, and motor skills. However, structural equation models showed that the influence of rhythm skills on literacy was mediated neither by phonological skills nor by motor abilities. These results suggest that rhythm skills continue to play a role in the acquisition of written language in third graders and that this contribution seems to be independent of phonological and motor skills.

The development of morphological representations in young readers: a cross-modal priming study.

The way children organize words in their memory has intrigued many researchers in the past 20 years. Given the large number of morphologically complex words in many languages, the influence of morphemes on this organization is being increasingly examined. The aim of this study was to understand how morphemic information influences English-speaking children's word recognition. Children in grades 3 and 5 were asked to complete a lexical decision priming task. Prime-target pairs varied in semantic similarity, with low (e.g., belly-bell), moderate (e.g., lately-late), and high similarity relations (e.g., boldly-bold). There were also word pairs similar in form only (e.g., spinach-spin) and in semantics only (e.g., garbage-trash). Primes were auditory and targets were presented visually. Analyses of children's lexical decision times revealed graded priming effects as a function of the convergence of form and meaning. These results indicate that developing readers do not necessarily need to lexicalize morphological units to facilitate word recognition. Their ability to process the morphological structure of words depends on their ability to develop connections between form and meaning.

What's morphology got to do with it: Oral reading fluency in adolescents with dyslexia.

Individuals with dyslexia often present phonological difficulties, ultimately impacting their reading and writing. Nevertheless, an individual with dyslexia may circumvent these difficulties through a reliance on linguistic units with more consistent spellings, such as morphemes. The increased use of morphological information by individuals with dyslexia has been argued to be a form of compensation. However, the contribution of morphological skills to reading fluency is still unclear. In this study, French adolescents with and without dyslexia were assessed on their morphological awareness and processing skills, along with reading fluency. Morphological awareness was assessed with a suffixation decision task, while a primed lexical decision task was used to assess morphological processing. Primes shared four possible relationships with the targets: morphological, semantic, orthographic, or unrelated. Group differences were not found for morphological awareness. In contrast, the group of adolescents with dyslexia showed a greater benefit of morphological priming. A continuous approach where reading fluency is seen as a broad spectrum was then used for future analyses. Benefits from morphological and orthographic priming were found to be inversely related to reading fluency. Morphological processing was found to be relatively high for individuals with low reading fluency proficiency, which suggests its use as a compensatory strategy in this population. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Morphological processing in written word production is based on orthography rather than semantics.

Written word production is influenced by central and peripheral processes. Evidence suggests that the activation of morphological units in the lexicon influences the dynamics of handwriting. In this study, we designed two priming experiments to examine the representation level of morphological information in the lexicon during written word production in the French language. In both experiments, target words (e.g., chanteur, "singer") were primed by a derived (e.g., chanter, "to sing"), a pseudo-derived (e.g., chantier, "work site"), or an unrelated (e.g., baleine, "whale") prime. We used the pseudo-derivation condition to disentangle two distinct levels of representation: the sublexical (also known as morpho-orthographic) and the supralexical (morpho-semantic). In Experiment 1 (learning-recall task), we measured the writing latency and writing duration of the target words. In Experiment 2 (word pair copying task), we measured the inter-word duration and writing duration of the target words. We observed morphological priming effects in both experiments: The processing of a derived prime influenced target writing compared to an unrelated prime, but the effect was observed on latencies in Experiment 1 and on target writing duration in Experiment 2. We found similar patterns of priming in the derived and pseudo-derived conditions in both experiments. The findings revealed that morphemes are processed at the morpho-orthographic representation level in written word production. Morphemes serve as grouping units during handwriting, a process that operates independently of their meaning.

The role of form and meaning in the processing of written morphology: A priming study in French developing readers.

Three visual priming experiments using three different prime durations (60ms in Experiment 1, 250ms in Experiment 2, and 800ms in Experiment 3) were conducted to examine which properties of morphemes (form and/or meaning) drive developing readers' processing of written morphology. French third, fifth, and seventh graders and adults (the latter as a control group) performed lexical decision tasks in which targets were preceded by morphological (e.g., tablette-TABLE, "little table-table"), pseudoderived (e.g., baguette-BAGUE, "little stick-ring"), orthographic control (e.g., abricot-ABRI, "apricot-shelter"), and semantic control (e.g., Tulipe-FLEUR, "tulip-flower") primes. Across all groups, different patterns of priming were observed in both morphological and orthographic/semantic control conditions, suggesting that they all process morphemes as units when reading. In developing readers, the processing of written morphology is triggered by the form properties of morphemes, and their semantic properties are activated later in the time course of word recognition. In adults, patterns of priming were similar except that the activation of the form properties of morphemes decreased earlier in the time course of word recognition. Taken together, these findings indicate that French developing readers process both the form and meaning properties of morphemes when reading and support a progressive quantitative change in the development of morphological processing over the course of reading development.

Modeling the influence of motor skills on literacy in third grade: Contributions of executive functions and handwriting.

Several nonlanguage factors influence literacy development, and motor skills are among those most studied. Despite the publication of several studies that have supported the existence of this relationship, the type of influence and underlying mechanisms have been little explored. Herein, we propose modeling the relationship between motor skills and literacy through structural equation modeling, testing the contribution of executive functions and handwriting skills as the possible mediators of this relationship. In a study of 278 third-grade children, we used a wide range of measures related to written language (reading, spelling, reading comprehension, and written production), fine motor skills (dominant hand, nondominant hand, and bimanual dexterity), executive functions (verbal and visuospatial working memory, inhibition, and shifting), and handwriting. Structural equation modeling of the relationship between these different variables indicated that in the third grade, the influence of fine motor skills on literacy is fully mediated by both executive functions and handwriting skills. These motor skills effects are observed for both low levels of processing (reading, spelling) and high levels of processing (reading comprehension, written production). The results are discussed in terms of the potential mechanisms underlying different literacy skills and their implications for pedagogical programs.

Morphology and spelling in French students with dyslexia: the case of silent final letters.

Spelling is a challenge for individuals with dyslexia. Phoneme-to-grapheme correspondence rules are highly inconsistent in French, which make them very difficult to master, in particular for dyslexics. One recurrent manifestation of this inconsistency is the presence of silent letters at the end of words. Many of these silent letters perform a morphological function. The current study examined whether students with dyslexia (aged between 10 and 15 years) benefit from the morphological status of silent final letters when spelling. We compared, their ability to spell words with silent final letters that are either morphologically justified (e.g., tricot, "knit," where the final "t" is pronounced in morphologically related words such as tricoter, "to knit" and tricoteur "knitter") or not morphologically justified (e.g., effort, "effort") to that of a group of younger children matched for reading and spelling level. Results indicated that the dyslexic students' spelling of silent final letters was impaired in comparison to the control group. Interestingly, morphological status helped the dyslexics improve the accuracy of their choice of final letters, contrary to the control group. This finding provides new evidence of morphological processing in dyslexia during spelling.

The sensitivity of children with SLI to phonotactic probabilities during lexical access.

UNLABELLED: The procedural deficit hypothesis (Ullman & Pierpont, 2005) has been proposed to account for the combination of linguistic and nonlinguistic deficits observed in specific language impairment (SLI). According to this proposal, SLI results from a deficit in procedural memory that prevents children from developing sensitivity to probabilistic sequences, amongst other deficits. We tested the ability of children with SLI to rely on a specific type of probabilities characterizing sequences that occur in a given language: phonotactic probabilities. Twenty French-speaking children with SLI (M=10;1), 20 typically developing children matched for chronological age (M=10;0) and 20 typically developing children matched for receptive vocabulary (M=7;4) performed an auditory lexical decision task. Pseudoword stimuli were built with combinations of either frequently associated phonemes (high phonotactic probability) or infrequently associated phonemes (low phonotactic probability). Phonotactic probabilities had a significant impact on the accuracy and speed of pseudoword rejection in children with SLI, but not in the two control groups. SLI children's greater reliance on phonotactic probabilities relative to typically developing children appears to contradict the PD hypothesis. Phonotactic probabilities may help them to partially overcome their difficulties in developing and accessing the phonological lexicon during spoken word recognition. LEARNING OUTCOMES: After reading this article, readers will understand the importance of sensitivity to phonotactic probabilities in language processing. They will also learn that such sensitivity is preserved in children with SLI. Finally, readers will understand that children with SLI are more prone to use phonotactic information when accessing their lexicon than typically-developing children.

The management of cohesion in written narratives in students with specific language impairment: Differences between childhood and adolescence.

The goal of this study was to investigate the management of cohesion by children and adolescents with specific language impairment (SLI) when writing a narrative in a communicative situation. Twelve children with SLI (from 7 to 11 years old) and 12 adolescents with SLI (from 12 to 18 years old) were chronological age-matched with 24 typically developing (TD) children and 24 TD adolescents. All participants attended mainstream classes: children in elementary schools and adolescents in middle and high schools. Analyses of cohesion focused on both density and diversity of connectives, punctuation marks and anaphors. Results attested that children with SLI were greatly impaired in their management of written cohesion and used specific forms previously observed in narrative speech such as left dislocations. By contrast, and not expected, the management of written cohesion by adolescents with SLI was close to that of their TD peers. The communicative writing situation we set up, which engaged participants to take into account the addressee, also made possible for adolescents with SLI to manage cohesion in writing.

How language affects children's use of derivational morphology in visual word and pseudoword processing: evidence from a cross-language study.

Developing readers have been shown to rely on morphemes in visual word recognition across several naming, lexical decision and priming experiments. However, the impact of morphology in reading is not consistent across studies with differing results emerging not only between but also within writing systems. Here, we report a cross-language experiment involving the English and French languages, which aims to compare directly the impact of morphology in word recognition in the two languages. Monolingual French-speaking and English-speaking children matched for grade level (Part 1) and for age (Part 2) participated in the study. Two lexical decision tasks (one in French, one in English) featured words and pseudowords with exactly the same structure in each language. The presence of a root (R+) and a suffix ending (S+) was manipulated orthogonally, leading to four possible combinations in words (R+S+: e.g., postal; R+S-: e.g., turnip; R-S+: e.g., rascal; and R-S-: e.g., bishop) and in pseudowords (R+S+: e.g., pondal; R+S-: e.g., curlip; R-S+: e.g., vosnal; and R-S-: e.g., hethop). Results indicate that the presence of morphemes facilitates children's recognition of words and impedes their ability to reject pseudowords in both languages. Nevertheless, effects extend across accuracy and latencies in French but are restricted to accuracy in English, suggesting a higher degree of morphological processing efficiency in French. We argue that the inconsistencies found between languages emphasize the need for developmental models of word recognition to integrate a morpheme level whose elaboration is tuned by the productivity and transparency of the derivational system.

Orthographic and morphemic effects in the written syllable counting task.

According to a recent hypothesis, the organization of letters into groups of successive consonants and vowels (i.e., CV pattern) constrains the orthographic structure of words. Here, we examined to what extent the morphological structure of words modifies the influence of the CV pattern in a syllable counting task. Participants were presented with written words matched for the number of syllables and comprising either one vowel cluster less than the number of syllables (hiatus words, e.g., création) or the same number of vowel clusters (control words, e.g., crépiter). Participants were slower and less accurate for hiatus than control stimuli, be it words (Experiments 1, 3) or pseudowords (Experiment 2). More importantly, this hiatus effect was present even when the stimuli had a morphemic boundary falling within the hiatus (e.g., ré-agir). The results suggest that the CV pattern of items more strongly influences performance in the syllable counting task than the morphological structure.

The sentence repetition task: a powerful diagnostic tool for French children with specific language impairment.

This study assesses the diagnostic accuracy and construct validity of a sentence repetition task that is commonly used for the identification of French children with specific language impairment (SLI). Thirty-four school-aged children with a confirmed, diagnostically based diagnosis of SLI, and 34 control children matched on age and nonverbal abilities performed the sentence repetition task. Two general scoring measures took into account the verbatim repetition of the sentence and the number of words accurately repeated. Moreover, five other scoring measures were applied to their answers in order to separately take into account their respect of lexical items, functional items, syntax, verb morphology, and the general meaning of the sentence. Results show good to high levels of sensitivity and specificity at the three cut-off points for all scoring measures. A principal component analysis revealed two factors. Scoring measures for the respect of functional words, syntax and verb morphology provided the largest loadings to the first factor, while scoring measures for the respect of lexical words and general semantics provided the largest loadings to the second factor. Sentence repetition appears to be a valuable tool to identify SLI in French children, and the ability to repeat sentences correctly is supported by two factors: a morphosyntactic factor and a lexical factor.

Lexical spelling in children and adolescents with specific language impairment: variations with the writing situation.

The goal of this study was to compare the lexical spelling performance of children and adolescents with specific language impairment (SLI) in two contrasting writing situations: a dictation of isolated words (a classic evaluative situation) and a narrative of a personal event (a communicative situation). Twenty-four children with SLI and 48 typically developing children participated in the study, split into two age groups: 7-11 and 12-18 years of age. Although participants with SLI made more spelling errors per word than typically developing participants of the same chronological age, there was a smaller difference between the two groups in the narratives than in the dictations. Two of the findings are particularly noteworthy: (1) Between 12 and 18 years of age, in communicative narration, the number of spelling errors of the SLI group was not different from that of the typically developing group. (2) In communicative narration, the participants with SLI did not make specific spelling errors (phonologically unacceptable), contrary to what was shown in the dictation. From an educational perspective or that of a remediation program, it must be stressed that the communicative narration provides children-and especially adolescents-with SLI an opportunity to demonstrate their improved lexical spelling abilities. Furthermore, the results encourage long-term lexical spelling education, as adolescents with SLI continue to show improvement between 12 and 18 years of age.