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The Role of Morphology in Reading in Spanish-Speaking Children with Dyslexia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 July 2013

Paz Suárez-Coalla  and
Fernando Cuetos
Paz Suárez-Coalla*
Affiliation:
Universidad de Oviedo (Spain)
Fernando Cuetos
Affiliation:
Universidad de Oviedo (Spain)
*
*Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Paz Suárez-Coalla. Departamento de Psicología. Universidad de Oviedo. Plaza Feijoo s/n. 33003 Oviedo, Asturias (Spain). E-mail: suarezpaz@uniovi.es
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Abstract

Morphemes facilitate visual word recognition, leading to greater accuracy and fluency in reading morphologically complex words. In children with dyslexia, the morphological structure might be useful to reduce difficulties caused by phonological deficits. The aim of this study was to determine whether Spanish-speaking children with dyslexia benefit from morphemes when reading. A group of children with dyslexia of different ages (7 to 10 years) and a group of children without reading disabilities, matched on chronological age and gender, participated in a task of reading isolated words and pseudowords in which morphological complexity was manipulated. Half of the stimuli were morphologically simple and half morphologically complex. Children with dyslexia benefit from morphology since they have better performance with the morphologically complex stimuli. These results indicate that they are able to develop representations of units larger than the grapheme, what suggests that Spanish-speaking children with dyslexia use the morphological structure to overcome their difficulties in phonological recoding. These results have important implications for the rehabilitation of children with dyslexia.

Keywords

readingtransparent languagedyslexiamorphology
Type
Research Article
Information
The Spanish Journal of Psychology , Volume 16 , 2013 , E51
Copyright
Copyright © Universidad Complutense de Madrid and Colegio Oficial de Psicólogos de Madrid 2013 

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Footnotes

This study was funded by Grant PSI-2009-09299 from the Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación, Gobierno. We also thank the children and their families the disinterested collaboration in this study.

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