The development of metalinguistic awareness and its relation to reading achievement

The relation between certain aspects of metalinguistic ability and reading, e.g., morpho-phonological ability and reading, has been well documented in the literature. What has not been fully discussed is the relation between structural-relational (semantic-syntactic) linguistic knowledge and reading development. This study examined two types of questions about this relation: (a) which aspects of structural-relational metalinguistic awareness in what forms and during which age periods are significantly related to reading achievement? and (b) what is the relation between metalinguistic awareness in oral language processing and written language processing? Sixty-four subjects, from fourth graders to adults, participated in the study. Each subject was asked to judge and produce corrections of nongrammatical, anomalous, and ambiguous stimulus items in sentences and passages. These items were presented in both oral and written modes. Results indicated that reading achievement and age were positively related to metalinguistic ability. Subjects were better able to judge than produce correct forms. While ambiguity was the most difficult task, nongrammaticality was the most discriminating task. Good readers' performance on oral tasks equalled their performance on written tasks by adulthood.     

Maîtrise de l’oral et de l’écrit en français et en tahitien : une étude longitudinale du CP au CM2 en Polynésie française

Many international scientific studies underline the advantage of bilingual children in oral language. This is especially evident in their meta-linguistic skills, as well as their writing, reading and written expression. Bilingualism could facilitate meta-linguistic development by allowing the child to differentiate early formal and semantic aspects of the code, perceive the arbitrary relationship between “ signified ” and “ significant ” and develop greater cognitive flexibility. This study, conducted in French Polynesia, had examined the specific effect of bilingual program on the morphological awareness and the cross-lingual effects of Tahitian-French transfers via the written word. A group of 128 Polynesian students were followed longitudinally from the end of First Grade to the end of Fifth Grade. Of these 128 students, 59 were part of an experimental group involved beginning in the First Grade, in two successive educational programs with five hours per week of Polynesian language and culture, which included systematic learning of reading and writing in Tahitian. A selection of 69 other students, who had never participated in these programs, constituted the control group. All students were tested each year on their oral language skills in French and Tahitian. At the end of Third Grade, a morphological awareness assessment in French was introduced (Reder et al., 2013), as well as a task of word recognition (TIME3 of Ecalle, 2006), a reading-comprehension (Lobrot, 1980) and spelling tasks (ECS3, Khomsi, 1998). These standardized assessments have been adapted in Tahitian. The first results acknowledged a positive effect of the bilingual education curriculum on Tahitian oral skills and on cross-lingual links between written skills and morphological awareness. In addition, the Tahitian word recognition greatly helped to explain the French written skills, after controlling the level of French morphological awareness.     

The relationship between morphological awareness and reading comprehension in Spanish‐speaking children

In the last decades, a series of studies has explored the role of morphological awareness on reading comprehension. Path analysis studies performed in English have shown that morphological awareness benefits reading comprehension both directly and indirectly, through word decoding. This issue has seldom been explored in Spanish. The aim of this study was to replicate in Spanish the results previously found in English. We used path analysis to assess three alternative models of the relationship between morphological awareness, word decoding and reading comprehension in 4th grade Spanish‐speaking children. Contrary to English, we found that morphological awareness benefits reading comprehension only directly. We conclude that in Spanish, in which accurate and fluent pronunciation of written words can be achieved through grapheme‐to‐phoneme conversion rules, morphological awareness does not help the correct pronunciation of words. Thus, morphological awareness is not relevant for word decoding in Spanish but is related to reading comprehension since this type of morphological knowledge provides access to the semantic and syntactic information of new words.     

Morphological awareness: development trends and patterns of evolution in kindergarten and primary education

We present a study that investigates changes in the acquisition and development of morphological awareness in children from 5 to 7 years old. This investigation was carried out on three separate occasions over two academic years, in which morphological awareness was assessed according to two levels. The data indicate an increase in the morphological awareness development from the kindergarten to primary education, verifying the acquisition in the first instance of the morphological judgment level and secondly, of morphological production level. It also generates a pattern of acquisition of the various parameters that make up morphology.     

Is there an alternative cerebral network associated with enhanced phonological processing in deaf speech-users? An exceptional case

Most people born deaf and exposed to oral language show scant evidence of sensitivity to the phonology of speech when processing written language. In this respect they differ from hearing people. However, occasionally, a prelingually deaf person can achieve good processing of written language in terms of phonological sensitivity and awareness, and in this respect appears exceptional. We report the pattern of event-related fMRI activation in such a deaf reader while performing a rhyme-judgment on written words with similar spelling endings that do not provide rhyme clues. The left inferior frontal gyrus pars opercularis and the left inferior parietal lobe showed greater activation for this task than for a letter-string identity matching task. This participant was special in this regard, showing significantly greater activation in these regions than a group of hearing participants with a similar level of phonological and reading skill. In addition, SR showed activation in the left mid-fusiform gyrus; a region which did not show task-specific activation in the other respondents. The pattern of activation in this exceptional deaf reader was also unique compared with three deaf readers who showed limited phonological processing. We discuss the possibility that this pattern of activation may be critical in relation to phonological decoding of the written word in good deaf readers whose phonological reading skills are indistinguishable from those of hearing readers.     

Prosodic sensitivity and morphological awareness in children’s reading

This study examined the relationships among prosodic sensitivity, morphological awareness, and reading ability in a sample of 104 8- to 13-year-olds. Using a task adapted from Carlisle (Applied Psycholinguistics, 9 (1988) 247-266), we measured children’s ability to produce morphological derivations with differing levels of phonological complexity between stem and derivation: No Change, Phonemic Change, Stress Change, and Both Phonemic and Stress Change. A 3 (Grade) × 4 (Derivation Type) analysis of variance showed that children perform significantly more poorly on both types of derivations that involve stress changes than on phonemic change and no change derivations. Regression analyses showed that both prosodic sensitivity and morphological awareness, especially in derivations that require manipulation of stress, are significant predictors of reading ability after controlling for age, verbal and nonverbal abilities, and phonological awareness.     

Learning to read in Chinese: Evidence for reciprocal relationships between word reading and oral language skills

This study investigates the longitudinal predictors of the development of Chinese word reading skills and potential bidirectional relationships between Chinese word reading and oral language skills. We examine, in a 2‐year longitudinal study, a wide range of theoretically important predictors (phonological awareness, tone awareness, morphological awareness, visual skills, rapid automatized naming, Pinyin knowledge, and vocabulary knowledge) of reading in 143 primary‐school children living in mainland China. Initial levels of reading were predicted by vocabulary knowledge, phonological awareness, and visual discrimination skills. Only initial reading levels predicted growth in reading. Initial reading also predicted growth in vocabulary knowledge and morphological construction. This pattern demonstrates that the early stages of learning to read in Chinese places demands on semantic (vocabulary) and visual skills in addition to phonological skills. Furthermore, early levels of word reading predict the growth of vocabulary knowledge and morphological awareness suggesting that the development of these oral language skills is facilitated by learning to read.     

On the relationship between phonological awareness,morphological awareness and Chinese literacy skills: evidence from an 8‐year longitudinal study

The present study reported data on phonological awareness, morphological awareness, and Chinese literacy skills of 294 children from an 8‐year longitudinal study. Results showed that mainland Chinese children's preliterate syllable awareness at ages 4 to 6 years uniquely predicted post‐literate morphological awareness at ages 7 to 10 years. Preliterate syllable awareness directly contributed to character reading and writing at age 11 years, while post‐literate phonemic awareness predicted only character reading at age 11 years. In addition, preliterate syllable and morphological awareness at ages 4 to 6 years had indirect effects on character reading and writing, reading fluency, and reading comprehension at age 11 years, through post‐literate morphological awareness at ages 7 to 10 years. Findings underscore the significant role of syllable awareness in Chinese character reading and writing, and the importance of morphological awareness in character‐level processing and high‐level literacy skills. More importantly, our results suggest the unique relation of syllable awareness and morphological awareness in Chinese as they focus on the same unit, which is also likely to map directly onto a character, the basic unit for high‐level Chinese reading skills.     

汉语普通话儿童复合词法意识的发展研究

研究旨在考察5、6、7、8岁的汉语儿童在偏正、述宾和主谓三种复合词法意识上的发展状况。词法判断任务的结果发现:5岁组三种词法意识之间无显著差异;6岁和7岁组的偏正意识和述宾意识无显著差异,但均优于主谓意识;8岁组偏正意识优于述宾意识,且二者依然均优于主谓意识。以上结果表明汉语儿童的复合词法意识发展具有不平衡性,由强到弱呈现出偏正述宾主谓意识的词法结构效应,这种强弱趋势可能与词法独立性和句法独立性之间的冲突以及复合词的中心性差异有关。     

语音意识、语素意识和快速命名在儿童言语发展中的作用

以130名幼儿园小、中、大班儿童为研究对象,通过分层回归,系统比较了语音意识、语素意识和快速命名三种认知技能在学前儿童口语词汇、汉字识别和阅读理解等言语能力发展中的作用和相对重要性,结果发现:(1)学前儿童的各项能力随着年龄的增加而显著提高;(2)除了年龄因素之外,语音意识和语素意识是解释口语词汇的重要变量;(3)在控制了年龄和口语词汇量之后,语音意识、语素意识和快速命名能力都分别对汉字识别成绩具有独立的预测作用;(4)在控制了年龄、口语词汇量、汉字识别和其他两种认知技能之后,只有语素意识仍然能够独立预测阅读理解成绩,表明语素意识对于汉语阅读能力的发展具有独特的作用.     

元语言意识和快速命名对小学生汉字听写的影响

汉字听写是小学生读写能力的重要组成部分,受多种认知技能影响。以858名小学一至六年级学生为对象,考察了元语言意识（语音意识、语素意识、正字法意识）和快速命名对汉字听写的影响,在控制了智力和口语词汇的影响后,结果发现：（1）语音意识和正字法意识在低年级儿童的汉字听写中起着重要作用,对中、高年级没有显著影响;（2）快速命名在中、高年级儿童的汉字听写中起着独特作用,而对低年级没有显著影响;（3）语素意识对整个小学阶段的汉字听写都起着重要作用。研究结果表明,各认知技能在儿童不同的发展阶段对汉字听写的作用有所不同。     

Effects of Tradislexia videogame on phonological awareness and word recognition in dyslexic children

The purpose of this research was to analyze the effects of multimedia training on phonological awareness and word recognition in dyslexic children. We used a control pretest-posttest design, and a sample of 62 children (26 male, 36 female) was selected from Primary Education. Children were selected and classified into two different groups: (1) an experimental group (N=32), and (2) a control group (N=30). The average range age was 9 and 12 years (M=126.7, SD=11.7). We administered phonological awareness tasks, which include different types of syllabic structure from the Sicole-R Multimedia Battery for assessment of cognitive processes in reading. We analyzed whether the Tradislexia videogame affected phonological awareness, considering separately the complexity of syllable structure and type of phonological awareness task. We also analyzed whether the gains in phonological processes were related to training based on type of task or type of syllable structure. The results showed that when we controlled the position of phoneme, the multimedia treatment in segmentation and blending with words that include CV syllables is a better predictor to explain improvement of word decoding processes.     

Morphological representation in an endangered,polysynthetic language

This article presents the results from an initial psycholinguistic study of patterns of morphological representation in Dene Suliné (Chipewyan), an indigenous and highly endangered language spoken in Northwestern Canada. Our investigation focused on how morphological knowledge in this polysynthetic language is affected across various levels of language attrition by employing a morphological segmentation task and an off-line lexical decision task. We discuss the manner in which these tasks target different aspects of morphological ability and then turn to methodological issues associated with conducting psycholinguistic studies with language users that differ in levels of age, education, literacy, and bilingualism (Dene- English). Finally, we report on the challenges of doing psycholinguistic research outside the confines of a university setting and make some recommendations to other researchers who might wish to undertake similar studies.     

Transfert de la conscience morphologique de l’arabe langue première au français langue seconde au cours des trois premières années d’apprentissage

There is a great deal of evidence to support the role of morphological awareness in reading development. However, towards second language acquisition, transfer of morphological awareness from first to second language (L1 to L2) is still discussed. The underlying question concerns the extent to which morphological awareness is a specific or universal process, and its dependence of linguistic features. The aim of this study is to examine cross-linguistic transfer of morphological awareness from Arabic L1 to French L2 (morphological awareness and word reading) at different level of learning French L2 (F_L2). 106 Tunisian children, whose first language is Arabic, in 1st (n = 29; mean age; 8; 10 years), 2nd (n = 33; mean age; 9; 9 years) or 3rd year (n = 44; mean age; 10; 10 years) of learning F_L2 participated to this study. Their morphological awareness (inflectional or derivational oddity detection tasks) and their performance in word reading (one minute test) were assessed in standard Arabic and French, as well as their vocabulary knowledge in French. A series of fixed-order hierarchical regression analysis was performed on derivational awareness performances, inflectional awareness performances and word reading performances in F_L2, controlling for effects of other important variables (e.g. French vocabulary, French morphological awareness with word reading scores as outcome variable and French inflectional or derivational awareness with French inflectional or derivational awareness scores as outcome variable respectively, Arabic word reading, etc.). Results show significant contributions of L1 morpho-derivational awareness on F_L2 morpho-derivational awareness in 2nd year (12%), and of L1 morphological awareness on reading words F_L2 in 3^rd year (5%). These results confirm the cross-linguistic transfer of morphological awareness, particularly derivational, from L1 to L2 among alphabetic — but orthographically and morphologically distances — languages. They also suggest that such a transfer could be relatively limited. It could appear during learning process after achieving a threshold in F_L2 and before specific L2 skills take place. Thus, beyond the morphological opacity of Arabic (nonlinear morphology) and linguistic distance between Arabic and French, the morphological transfer could appear on rich and important morphological dimension in L1 and suggest dealing with the nature of cross-linguistic abilities in depth.     

Diminished episodic memory awareness in older adults: evidence from feeling-of-knowing and recollection

The ability to reflect on and monitor memory processes is one of the most investigated metamemory functions, and one of the important ways consciousnesses interacts with memory. The feeling-of-knowing (FOK) is one task used to evaluate individual's capacity to monitor their memory. We examined this reflective function of metacognition in older adults. We explored the contribution of metacognition to episodic memory impairment, in relation to the idea that older adults show a reduction in memory awareness characteristic of episodic memory. A first experiment showed that age affects the accuracy of FOK when predictions are made on an episodic memory task but not on a semantic memory task, suggesting a particular role for episodic memory awareness in metacognitive evaluations. A second experiment showed that the age-difference in episodic FOK accuracy was removed if one took into account subjective reports of memory awareness, or recollection. We argue that the FOK deficit specific to episodic memory is based on a lack of memory awareness manifest as a recollection deficit.     

儿童早期字词意识的发展

探讨了4～6岁儿童早期字词意识的年龄差异,拟为元语言意识的多因素模型提出支持性的证据。实验结果表明:4岁儿童的字词意识及5岁儿童的词意识还很不清晰,6岁儿童已达到较高的字意识水平;幼儿在字意识任务上的成绩显著地优于词意识任务。     

The effects of training of morphological structure on spelling derived words by dyslexic adolescents

This exploratory study aimed to determine the effects of explicit instruction about morphological structure on the spelling of derived words. A cross‐sectional ability level‐design was employed in order to determine differences in response to instruction between dyslexic students aged 13+years and age‐matched and spelling level matched control groups. The study was based on the word‐pair paradigm (a base and derived word) and combined oral instruction with written materials. The intervention had a substantial impact in enhancing the spelling of derivations by the dyslexic adolescents. Their gains were appropriate for their spelling level, stable two months after the intervention, and generalized to untrained but analogous items in terms of structure and suffixation. Non‐dyslexic younger participants matched in terms of spelling level also showed training and generalisation effects of the same size as their dyslexic counterparts, while the age‐matched controls did not improve so much because of ceiling effects. It is proposed that morphological awareness constitutes a positive asset for dyslexic adolescents that can be used efficiently to counterbalance their severe phonological deficiencies.     

一年级汉语儿童语素意识与口语词汇的双向关系:追踪研究的证据

以145名小学一年级儿童为被试,进行为期6个月的追踪,考察了儿童复合、同音和同形等不同层面语素意识与口语词汇的双向关系。结果发现:(1)控制了年龄、一般认知能力、语音意识及口语词汇的自回归效应后,同音和复合语素意识对口语词汇的发展具有显著的预测作用。(2)控制了相关变量及自回归效应后,口语词汇能够显著预测复合、同音和同形语素意识的发展。     

Adolescents’ inhibitory control: keep it cool or lose control

Inhibitory control (i.e., the ability to resist automatisms, temptations, distractions, or interference and to adapt to conflicting situations) is a determinant of cognitive and socio‐emotional development. In light of the discrepancies of previous findings on the development of inhibitory control in affectively charged contexts, two important issues need to be addressed. We need to determine (a) whether cool inhibitory control (in affectively neutral contexts) and hot inhibitory control (in affectively charged contexts) follow the same developmental pattern and (b) the degree of specificity of these two types of inhibitory control at different ages. Thus, in the present study, we investigated the developmental patterns of cool and hot inhibitory control and the degree of specificity of these abilities in children, adolescents and adults. Typically developing children, adolescents, and adults performed two Stroop‐like tasks: an affectively neutral one (Cool Stroop task) and an affectively charged one (Hot Stroop task). In the Cool Stroop task, the participants were asked to identify the ink color of the words independent of color that the words named; in the Hot Stroop task, the participants were asked to identify the emotional expression of a face independent of the emotion named by a simultaneously displayed written word. We found that cool inhibitory control abilities develop linearly with age, whereas hot inhibitory control abilities follow a quadratic developmental pattern, with adolescents displaying worse hot inhibitory control abilities than children and adults. In addition, cool and hot inhibitory control abilities were correlated in children but not in adolescents and adults. The present study suggests (a) that cool and hot inhibitory control abilities develop differently from childhood to adulthood – i.e., that cool inhibition follows a linear developmental pattern and hot inhibition follows an adolescent‐specific pattern – and (b) that they become progressively more domain‐specific with age.     

Morphological Analogies in Hebrew-Speaking University Students with Dyslexia Compared with Typically Developing Gradeschoolers

Little attention has been devoted to date to the study of morphological knowledge in individuals with developmental dyslexia. The current study compares the ability of Hebrew-speaking adult dyslexic students and gradeschool children to analyze written words into their morphological components, using a linguistic analogy task. Two sets of monolingual Hebrew-speaking participants—152 typically developing gradeschool children and 38 undergraduate students diagnosed with reading disabilities—were administered the Morphological Analogies Task. Results indicate an early ability of normally developing children to perform morphological analogies, while the adult dyslexic group performed on par with 3rd and 4th grade. Error analysis revealed that the overwhelming majority of the erroneous responses in all grades involved morphological strategies rather than the associative semantic strategy. However, the adult dyslexic students had many more associative responses than the graderschoolers. This testifies to the reduced written morphological abilities of adult dyslexic students.