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Morphological awareness, word reading, and reading comprehension in Portuguese

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 November 2017

PEDRO VIANA DE FREITAS JR. ,
MÁRCIA MARIA PERUZZI ELIA DA MOTA Open the ORCID record for MÁRCIA MARIA PERUZZI ELIA DA MOTA [Opens in a new window]  and
S. HÉLÈNE DEACON
PEDRO VIANA DE FREITAS JR.
Affiliation:
Universidade Salgado de Oliveira
MÁRCIA MARIA PERUZZI ELIA DA MOTA*
Affiliation:
Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro and Universidade Salgado de Oliveira
S. HÉLÈNE DEACON
Affiliation:
Dalhousie University
*
ADDRESS FOR CORRESPONDENCE Marcia Mota, Programa de Pós-Graduação em Psicologia, Universidade Salgado de Oliveira, Rua Marechal Deodoro, 217, 2° andar, Centro Niterói, CEP 24030060Brazil. E-mail: mmotapsi@pesquisador.cnpq.br
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Abstract

We investigated the unique effects of morphological awareness on several aspects of reading in Portuguese. We tested 132 Portuguese-speaking children in the fourth grade. Morphological awareness was assessed with a word analogy task that included inflectional and derivational transformations. Results indicated that morphological awareness was a significant predictor of word reading accuracy, word reading fluency, and reading comprehension after controlling for the effects of nonverbal ability and phonological awareness. Morphological awareness also explained unique variance in reading comprehension after adding word reading as a control. In conclusion, morphological awareness has important roles in both word reading and reading comprehension in Portuguese. Educational and clinical implications are discussed.

Keywords

derivational and inflectional morphologymorphological awarenessPortuguesereadingword analogy task
Type
Original Article
Information
Applied Psycholinguistics , Volume 39 , Issue 3 , May 2018 , pp. 507 - 525
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Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2017 

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References

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