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Inside Incidental Word Learning: Children's Strategic Use of Morphological Information to Infer Word Meanings
Author(s) -
McCutchen Deborah,
Logan Becky
Publication year - 2011
Publication title -
reading research quarterly
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.162
H-Index - 90
eISSN - 1936-2722
pISSN - 0034-0553
DOI - 10.1002/rrq.003
Subject(s) - vocabulary , comprehension , psychology , context (archaeology) , sentence , linguistics , vocabulary development , word (group theory) , word lists by frequency , word recognition , nonsense , cognitive psychology , reading (process) , philosophy , paleontology , biochemistry , chemistry , gene , biology
This study examined whether morphological analysis may be a mechanism underlying the relationship of morphological awareness to vocabulary and comprehension. Eighty‐eight fifth‐ and 74 eighth‐grade students completed a task designed to assess whether students use morphological analysis to infer meanings of low‐frequency, presumably unfamiliar, words. Students chose a definition from among three alternatives for low‐frequency, morphologically accessible words or approximate synonyms that were less morphologically accessible, both within the same sentence context. In addition, they chose definitions for 18 nonsense words that were also designed to afford differential access via morphological analysis. Students were more accurate with morphologically accessible items (words and nonwords) than less accessible items, suggesting that students can use morphological analysis to infer word meanings. Regression analyses indicated that skill in morphological analysis accounted for unique variance in vocabulary and comprehension for both age groups. These results have implications for theoretical accounts of how morphological awareness may support students’ vocabulary growth and comprehension.