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Scientific Studies of Reading

ISSN: 1088-8438 (Print) 1532-799X (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/hssr20

The Relation Between Morphological Awarenessand Reading Comprehension: Evidence FromMediation and Longitudinal Models

S. Hélène Deacon, Michael J. Kieffer & Annie Laroche

To cite this article: S. Hélène Deacon, Michael J. Kieffer & Annie Laroche (2014) TheRelation Between Morphological Awareness and Reading Comprehension: Evidence FromMediation and Longitudinal Models, Scientific Studies of Reading, 18:6, 432-451, DOI:10.1080/10888438.2014.926907

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10888438.2014.926907

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Scientific Studies of Reading, 18:432–451, 2014Copyright © 2014 Society for the Scientific Study of ReadingISSN: 1088-8438 print/1532-799X onlineDOI: 10.1080/10888438.2014.926907

The Relation Between Morphological Awarenessand Reading Comprehension: Evidence From Mediation

and Longitudinal Models

S. Hélène DeaconDalhousie University

Michael J. KiefferNew York University

Annie LarocheDalhousie University

We examined the role of a hypothesized factor in reading comprehension: morphological awareness,or the awareness of and ability to manipulate the smallest meaningful units or morphemes. In thislongitudinal study, we measured English-speaking children’s morphological awareness, word read-ing skills, and reading comprehension at Grades 3 and 4, in addition to their phonological awareness,vocabulary, and nonverbal ability as control measures. Path analyses revealed that word reading skillspartially mediated the relationship between morphological awareness and reading comprehension ateach grade. Further, children’s early morphological awareness partially explained children’s gainsin reading comprehension, and their early reading comprehension partially explained their gains inmorphological awareness. These findings support the predictions of recent models of reading compre-hension: that morphological awareness impacts reading comprehension both indirectly through wordreading skills and directly through the language system and that morphological awareness underpinsthe development of reading comprehension (e.g., Perfetti, Landi, & Oakhill, 2005).

Reading comprehension is the ultimate goal of reading instruction (Snow, 2002) for good reason.Given the importance of the ability to understand text, the relative paucity of knowledge of theskills involved in reading comprehension is surprising (Snow, 2002). Several studies have showna correlation between morphological awareness, or the awareness of and ability to manipulate thesmallest meaningful units in words (Carlisle, 1995), and reading comprehension beyond substan-tive control measures (e.g., Deacon & Kirby, 2004; Ku & Anderson, 2003). We explore here twounresolved questions about the nature of this relationship.

Correspondence should be sent to S. Hélène Deacon, Department of Psychology, Dalhousie University, 1355 OxfordStreet, PO Box 15000, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada B3H 4R2. E-mail: helene.deacon@dal.ca

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Our research questions are inspired directly by current models of reading comprehension.First, in their architecture of text reading comprehension, Perfetti, Landi, and Oakhill (2005)described two roles for morphology. As a part of the lexicon (e.g., Rabin & Deacon, 2008),morphology impacts word reading skills, which in turn affect reading comprehension. As a partof the linguistic system, morphology affects reading comprehension directly. Accordingly, weinvestigate potential mediation by word reading skills in the relationship between morpholog-ical awareness and reading comprehension (see, e.g., Jarmulowicz, Hay, Taran, & Ethington,2008). Second, we investigate whether morphological awareness supports gains in readingcomprehension and/or vice versa (see, e.g., Kruk & Bergman, 2013), thereby testing predic-tions of factors affecting the acquisition of reading comprehension skill (e.g., Perfetti et al.,2005). Our study of young English-speaking children sheds additional light on the relation-ship between morphological awareness and reading comprehension with our mediation andlongitudinal models.

WORD READING SKILLS MEDIATING THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEENMORPHOLOGICAL AWARENESS AND READING COMPREHENSION

Our first question lies in identifying the extent to which children’s word reading skills mightmediate the relationship between morphological awareness and reading comprehension, testinga current model of reading comprehension (Perfetti et al., 2005). Several recent studies provideempirical evidence for a relationship between morphological awareness and reading comprehen-sion that is either partially or completely mediated by word reading skills. In a study of Grade6 children, Kieffer and Box (2013) found a direct relationship between morphological awarenessand reading comprehension, as well as partial mediation via word reading fluency. Three otherstudies uncovered evidence of complete mediation by some aspect of word level reading. In astudy of Grade 2 to 4 children, the relationship between morphological awareness and readingcomprehension did not survive controls for single word reading (Proctor, Silverman, Harring, &Montecillo, 2012; see also Goodwin, Huggins, Carlo, August, & Calderon, 2013). Similarly,in a study of Grade 3 children, nonword reading entirely mediated the relationship betweenmorphological awareness and reading comprehension (Jarmulowicz et al., 2008). Morphologicalawareness in these studies was assessed with a variety of measures: a nonword suffix choicetask (Kieffer & Box, 2013) and a sentence completion task (Proctor et al., 2012), both pre-sented in both oral and written format, and with a “comes from” task based on Rubin (1988;Jarmulowicz et al., 2008). These studies support the role of word reading skills in either par-tially or completely explaining the relationship between morphological awareness and readingcomprehension.

In contrast, Kieffer and Lesaux’s (2012a) study of Grade 6 children found a direct contributionof morphological awareness to reading comprehension with no mediation by word reading flu-ency (see also Kieffer, Biancarosa, & Mancilla-Martinez, 2013). Morphological awareness wasmeasured with nonword and a real word sentence completion tasks presented both in writing andorally. This study provides evidence of a direct relationship between morphological awarenessand reading comprehension that is not mediated by word reading skills (see also Kirby et al.,2012; Nagy, Berninger, Abbott, Vaughan, & Vermeulen, 2003).

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Taken together, the majority of prior studies suggest that word reading skills mediates, eithercompletely or in part, the relationship between morphological awareness and reading comprehen-sion (e.g., Jarmulowicz et al., 2008; Kieffer & Box, 2013). This possibility needs direct testingwith statistical methods designed to do so (see, e.g., Kieffer et al., 2013). It also requires theinclusion of multiple control variables, such as phonological awareness (e.g., Jarmulowicz et al.,2008).

THE TEMPORAL ORDER OF THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN MORPHOLOGICALAWARENESS AND READING COMPREHENSION

Our second question lies in the temporal order of the relationship between morphological aware-ness and reading comprehension. This question is of value for theories of reading comprehension;as an example, Perfetti et al. (2005) emphasized the importance of investigating the acquisitionof reading comprehension skill. Kuo and Anderson (2006) suggested that the assumption to thatdate is that “morphological awareness is a contributing cause of reading development” (p. 175).However, they also noted that exposure to print could increase children’s morphological aware-ness (see also Carlisle, 2000). In our view, this exposure is most likely to impact morphologicalawareness if it involves understanding of texts.

Consider an example. A child reading the sentence “She raised her eyebrows, thinking thatthe idea was questionable” might better understand the word questionable, and therefore the sen-tence, if he or she were to parse questionable into its morphemes (question and able). In theother direction, understanding the text could bring both semantic and syntactic information thatcould help the child to identify the component morphemes in questionable. Understanding thephrase “She raised her eyebrows” could invoke images of surprise, a semantic association thatcould support detection of the base question. Understanding the sentence could also lead chil-dren to expect a noun in sentence-final position, thereby supporting extraction of the suffix –ion,typically added to create nouns. And, of course, two directions of influence are not mutuallyexclusive; the relationships could be reciprocal.

Three recent studies examined the temporal order of the relationship between morphologi-cal awareness and reading comprehension by including auto-regressor controls (Kenny, 1975).In a study of Grades 3 to 10 students, Foorman, Petscher, and Bishop (2012) showed that mor-phological awareness added 2% to 9% of unique variance in predicting reading comprehensionassessed some months later, beyond the autoregressor and the effects of spelling and text readingefficiency. Similarly, Kruk and Bergman (2013) found that morphological awareness assessedat Grade 1 predicted growth in reading comprehension skill between Grades 1 and 3, beyondphonological awareness, vocabulary, and word and nonword reading (see Deacon & Kirby, 2004,for similar results between Grade 2 and Grades 4 and 5). These first two studies measured mor-phological awareness with a sentence completion task (e.g., Carlisle, 1988) and the latter witha word analogy task (e.g., Nunes, Bryant, & Bindman, 1997). These studies support the possi-bility that morphological awareness plays a role in the development of reading comprehensionskill.

Only one of these studies evaluated the other, not mutually exclusive, possibility: that readingcomprehension supports gains in morphological awareness. Kruk and Bergman (2013) found thatreading comprehension at Grade 1 predicted growth in morphological awareness between Grades

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MORPHOLOGICAL AWARENESS AND READING COMPREHENSION 435

1 and 3, beyond their controls. These results support the possibility of a reciprocal relationshipbetween morphological awareness and reading comprehension.

THE PRESENT STUDY

The present study tracked a group of monolingual English-speaking children in Grade 3 throughto Grade 4. This is a particularly fertile time for growth in morphological awareness (Anglin,1993) and reading comprehension (Chall, 1983).

Our first research question focused on the potential mediating role of word reading skillsin the relationship between morphological awareness and reading comprehension. As such, itinforms current models of reading comprehension (Perfetti et al., 2005). As in prior studies(e.g., Jarmulowicz et al., 2008), we evaluate these relationships concurrently, at each of Grades3 and 4. We use the term word reading skills to refer to the many different skills that childrenuse in their single word reading. To capture these skills, we assessed both real and nonwordreading accuracy (see, e.g., Deacon, Benere, & Pasquarella, 2013; Wolter, Wood, & D’zatko,2009). Based on Perfetti et al. (2005) we hypothesized that morphological awareness wouldhave both indirect (via word reading skills) and direct relations with reading comprehension inboth grades.

Our second question examined the temporal order of the relationship between morphologicalawareness and reading comprehension. Based on Kruk and Bergman (2013), we hypothesizedthat we would find bidirectional relations between these two skills.

We used an orally presented word analogy measure of morphological awareness. The absenceof a sentence context in this task removes the influence of a potential confound with syntacticawareness (Kuo & Anderson, 2006). To increase content validity, this task included inflected andderived words and both phonological and orthographic changes. Given the potential that analogytasks tap, at least in part, children’s general cognitive ability, we controlled for nonverbal ability.We also controlled for phonological awareness and vocabulary to reduce the effects of skillslikely to be intertwined with both morphological awareness and reading comprehension (Kuo &Anderson, 2006).

METHOD

Participants

The data analyzed here are from a larger longitudinal study, in which we invited all Grade 1 chil-dren in seven rural schools in Eastern Canada to participate. Average participation rate was 62%.In Grade 1, the parents of 124 children gave consent for their participation. By Grades 3 and4, 100 children remained in the sample (18 children had moved, five had incomplete data, andone was a multivariate outlier). There were no significant differences in performance for these100 children and the other 24 (ps > .05). In Grade 3, the children were an average of 8 years11 months, and there were 47 boys.

All parents of the 100 children completed a background questionnaire in Grade 1. All partici-pants were reported to speak English as a first language. Education and occupation was reported

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for 89 of the parents. Average socioeconomic status was 4.17 (SD = 1.77) representing workingclass backgrounds (based on Hollingshead, 1957).

Procedure

All tasks were individually administered in a quiet room in the child’s school by one of twotrained research assistants. Testing took place in the winter term (January–April), with 12 monthsbetween testing points. The tests took approximately 1.5 hr and were administered in at least twoshorter sessions depending on the child’s focus and classroom schedules. These sessions includedother tests not described here.

Consistent with recommended practice when analyses focus on relationships between mea-sures, the tasks were presented in the same order to all participants: vocabulary, WordIdentification, Word Attack, phonological awareness, morphological awareness, reading com-prehension, and nonverbal reasoning. All measures, save one, were administered to participantswhen they were in Grade 3 and then again in Grade 4. Nonverbal reasoning was assessed only inGrade 3, given that it is relatively stable (Wechsler, 1999). Table 1 contains reliabilities for eachtask. All were above .80, except for Grade 4 morphological awareness and vocabulary (.62 and.77, respectively). For each of the standardized measures of reading comprehension, word readingskills, and nonverbal reasoning measures, we followed the respective manual’s administration andscoring instructions. For the reading measures this included the use of alternate forms to reducepractice effects between testing time points. This is unlikely to affect results at each grade, giventhe similarity in psychometric properties of the tasks and their high intercorrelation. All measuresincluded practice items to ensure understanding.

Measures

Reading comprehension. Participants’ reading comprehension was measured using thePassage Comprehension subtest of the Woodcock Reading Mastery Tests–Revised (Woodcock,1998). Participants read short passages, for which they are asked to provide a missing word.Testing stopped when children incorrectly answered six consecutive items. This widely usedmeasure is among the most appropriate for longitudinal research because its individually adaptivedesign allows it to capture a wide range of student ability levels while also providing a verticallyequated developmental scale to measure growth.

Morphological awareness task. Morphological awareness was assessed with a word anal-ogy task. The task had 21 items in Grade 3 and 14 items in Grade 4. All items are listed in theappendix. In Grade 4, we removed the seven items that were derived English–French cognateitems (e.g., serve:servant) to reduce any possible influence of mandatory instruction in Frenchthat the children began in that grade. This task included both inflectional and derivational items(indicated in the appendix) and items with and without a phonological change. Including itemswith a phonological change ensures that the task cannot be done by phonological manipulationalone. Each item followed the A:B::C:D form. Two puppets “presented” the A:B word pair (e.g.,Puppet 1 says “run” and Puppet 2 says “ran”). Puppet 1 subsequently said the C item (e.g.,“walk”), and children were asked to complete the pattern (D) by providing a verbal answer for

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MORPHOLOGICAL AWARENESS AND READING COMPREHENSION 437

TABLE 1Descriptive Statistics for all Variables Organized by Grade

Grade 3 Grade 4

Measure M SD Skewness Reliability M SD Skewness Reliability

Reading ComprehensionRaw score 33.82 6.88 −0.88 .89a 37.33 7.05 −1.06 .92a

Grade-based standardscore

104.43 10.79 92b 102.00 10.99

Morphological AwarenessRaw scorec 11.47d 3.64 −0.34 .80a 9.35e 2.086 −0.47 .69a

Rasch-scaled score 9.05 1.52 −0.15 .82a 10.00 1.30 −0.26 .62a

Word IdentificationRaw score 61.85 11.45 −0.73 .95a 69.60 12.33 −0.30 .96a

Grade-based standardscore

102.36 11.93 .97b 102.68 14.58

Word AttackRaw score 24.27 9.00 −0.42 .93a 29.36 8.92 −1.01 .94a

Grade-based standardscore

104.71 12.47 .91b 108.99 13.35

Word Reading SkillsGrade-based z score 0.00 1.00 −0.61 .97f 0.00 1.00 −0.68 .97f

VocabularyRaw score 33.82 5.07 −0.32 .84g 36.03 4.88 −0.43 .77d

Phonological AwarenessRaw scorec 8.35h 3.31 −0.23 .83a 13.42i 5.19 −0.33 .93a

Nonverbal Reasoningk

Raw score 17.63 5.80 −0.41 .92g — — — —Age-based standard score 50.68j 9.71j .94b — — — —

Age (months) 107.11 3.22 −0.08 — 119.11 3.17 −0.07 —

aSample-specific Cronbach’s alpha reliability coefficient. bManual-reported split-half reliability coefficient.cDifferent task in each grade, so scores are not comparable. dTotal correct raw score out of 21. eTotal correct rawscore out of 14. fReliability of a composite based on the reliabilities of the two individual components, variances of thetwo components, and the correlation between them. gSample-specific split-half reliability (with Spearman-Brown cor-rections). hRaw score out of 13. iRaw score out of 20. jStandard score with a mean of 50 and a standard deviation of 10(all other standard scores in the table indicate a mean of 100 and a standard deviation of 15). kOne participant did notcomplete this task, so n = 99.

the fourth word (e.g., “walked”). The score on this task was the total number of items answeredwith the accurate target word (e.g., walked).

To preserve the maximum amount of information and maximize reliability, Rasch methodswere used to create a vertically equated scale incorporating the available items in each grade(e.g., Bond & Fox, 2007). This was particularly important for the longitudinal analyses. Raschmethods are used widely to vertically equate scores from adaptive measures, such as the PPVTand Woodcock measures (Dunn & Dunn, 1997; Woodcock, 1998). In the analyses here, Raschmethods preserve the information from all 21 items completed in Grade 3 and maximize the reli-ability of the Grade 3 score. Rasch methods enable the creation of developmental scales usingdifferent items on different occasions by anchoring the scale with the items overlapping between

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time points. Specifically, the 14 overlapping items were treated as anchor items, and their thresh-olds in the Grade 3 Rasch model were fixed to the values estimated from the Grade 4 model;a constant of 10 was added to the resulting Rasch-scaled developmental scale scores to avoidnegative values. This yielded good reliability for the Grade 3 scores (.82 at sample mean) andadequate reliability for the Grade 4 scores (.62 at the sample mean).

Word reading skills. Two tests assessed word reading skills: Word Identification andWord Attack from the Woodcock Reading Mastery Test–Revised (Woodcock, 1998). In WordIdentification, participants read single real words without necessarily having to recognize theword to do so. Word Attack “measures the child’s ability to apply phonic and structural analysisskills” (Woodcock, 1998, p. 6) to pronounce unfamiliar words. These subtests contain similarproportions of real or plausible morphologically complex items (e.g., items akin to operation,baflanter). Scores for the Word Identification and Word Attack tasks were highly correlated ineach grade (see Table 2). We used a simple composite score in all models. This was created byaveraging estimated z scores for the two measures at each grade. Doing so allows scores on thetwo tasks to contribute equally to the values used in analyses.

Phonological awareness. In Grade 3, we assessed phonological awareness with a 13-itemphoneme elision task (based on Rosner & Simon, 1971). In Grade 4, we used the 20-item elisionsubtest from the Comprehensive Test of Phonological Processing (Wagner, Torgesen, & Rashotte,

TABLE 2Correlations Between Variables, in Raw Scores

Measure 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16.

1. G3 Reading Comprehension2. G4 Reading Comprehension .783. G3 Morphological Awareness .62 .634. G4 Morphological Awareness .68 .64 .735. G3 Word Identification .78 .70 .63 .616. G4 Word Identification .73 .65 .57 .58 .907. G3 Word Attack .66 .58 .52 .59 .88 .888. G4 Word Attack .71 .60 .55 .55 .86 .89 .869. G3 Word Reading Skills

Compositea.74 .66 .59 .62 .97 .92 .97 .89

10. G4 Word Reading SkillsCompositea

.74 .64 .57 .58 .90 .97 .90 .97 .93

11. G3 Vocabulary .45 .48 .47 .48 .38 .33 .32 .30 .36 .3212. G4 Vocabulary .47 .51 .41 .38 .41 .37 .29 .27 .36 .33 .6913. G3 Phonological Awareness .54 .47 .54 .56 .64 .68 .72 .66 .70 .69 .44 .3214. G4 Phonological Awareness .50 .51 .52 .58 .59 .60 .60 .56 .62 .59 .44 .38 .6515. G3 Nonverbal Reasoning .45 .52 .46 .46 .45 .40 .43 .39 .46 .41 .50 .49 .44 .5016. G3 Age (months) .05 .08 .19 .09 .06 .09 .07 .02 .07 .05 .05 .01 .08 .10 .1317. G4 Age (months) .05 .09 .18 .07 .06 .07 .06 .01 .06 .04 .08 .02 .08 .08 .13 .99

Note. rs > .19 are significant at p < .05. G = grade.aIndicates within-grade z scores used for these composites.

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MORPHOLOGICAL AWARENESS AND READING COMPREHENSION 439

1999), which included both phoneme and syllable deletion tasks. We changed the task betweenyears to avoid practice effects. In both tasks, children are asked to say a specified word and thento say it again but without saying a particular segment (e.g., items akin to “say bird. Now saybird without the /d/”). Both phonological awareness tasks offered practice items and testing wasdiscontinued if children made four consecutive errors.

Vocabulary. Receptive vocabulary was measured with a shortened version of the PeabodyPicture Vocabulary Test (PPVT-III; Dunn & Dunn, 1997). This modified PPVT (M-PPVT) wasadministered and scored as per the manual; however, only every fourth item from the PPVT-IIIwas administered (decreasing the maximum number of items from 204 to 51 items). Childrenwere asked to indicate which of four pictures best represented a word that was provided orally bythe tester. The start point was based on age, as prescribed in the manual. Testing stopped after sixconsecutive errors.

This modification of the PPVT-III maintains the progression of item difficulty but reducestesting time in the interest of decreasing missed class time. Similar shortened versions of PPVThave been used successfully in other studies (e.g., Pasquarella, Chen, Lam, Luo, & Ramirez,2011). As reported elsewhere (Deacon et al., 2013), children in this study completed the fullPPVT at Grade 1. Scores on the full and shortened item sets at Grade 1 correlated to a similardegree with the subset scores on at Grades 3 (.62 and .61, respectively) and 4 (.65 and .63,respectively). The similarity in these correlations suggests stability in measurement across time,despite a reduction in number of items.

Nonverbal reasoning. We assessed nonverbal reasoning with the Matrix Reasoning subtestof the Wechsler Abbreviated Scale of Intelligence (Wechsler, 1999). Children were presented withan incomplete pattern and asked to select the missing piece from five possible options. Testingdiscontinued when the child made four consecutive errors.

RESULTS

Preliminary Analyses

Table 1 presents descriptive statistics, for both raw scores (total correct) and standard scoreswhere applicable. The standard scores indicate that the sample performed in the average rangeon all standardized measures. The skew statistics indicate moderate deviations from univariatenormality (i.e., skewness < –0.50) for Grade 3 Reading Comprehension and Word Identificationand substantial deviations (i.e., skewness < –1.0) for Grade 4 Reading Comprehension and WordAttack. As a result of these deviations from univariate normality, which raise the possibility ofdeviations from multivariate normality, we used a robust test statistic for comparing alternativemodels and bootstrapped confidence intervals described next.

The correlations for raw scores are presented in Table 2. Morphological awareness appears tobe slightly more strongly correlated with reading comprehension than with word reading skills.That said, given the substantive number of significant intercorrelations, we turn to multivariateanalyses to estimate unique relationships between measures. These estimates and all subsequent

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model estimates used full information maximum likelihood to account for a very small amountof missing data (no more than two cases with missing data on any given measure).

To determine the size of effects we could potentially detect, we conducted a power analysisusing a Monte Carlo simulation (Muthén & Muthén, 2002) for the models tested here. Our samplesize of 100 yielded power above .80 to detect medium sized effects (i.e., standardized regres-sion weights of .3), when the controls also had medium sized effects. This sample size yieldedinsufficient power to detect small effects (standardized regression weights of .1), indicating thatnull results for small effects may be due to limited statistical power.

Word Reading Skills Mediating the Relationship Between Morphological Awarenessand Reading Comprehension

Our first research question was whether word reading skills mediated the relation betweenmorphological awareness and reading comprehension in each of Grade 3 and 4. To addressthis question, we fitted the hypothesized partial mediation path analysis model (Model 1A inFigure 1). In terms of Baron and Kenny’s (1986) classical conceptualization of mediation, thismodel simultaneously tests whether morphological awareness predicts word reading (X to M),whether word reading predicts reading comprehension (M to Y), and whether the direct effectremains significant after accounting for mediation (X to Y). To determine if mediation is fullor partial, we explicitly compared this hypothesized model to an alternate model in which therelation between morphological awareness and reading comprehension is fully mediated by wordreading skills (Model 1B, with no X to Y path); if Model 1A fits the data significantly better thanModel 1B, it supports a conclusion of partial mediation. We also compared our hypothesizedmodel to an alternate model in which morphological awareness predicts reading comprehensionbut not word reading skills (Model 1C, with no X to M path). Each model was fitted separatelyto data from Grade 3 and from Grade 4. To interpret the results across grades and to includethe composite for word reading skills, z scores (estimated within each grade separately) wereused in this set of analyses. These z scores were based on raw scores for all measures exceptmorphological awareness, which were based on Rasch-estimated scaled scores. Findings fromthese mediation models were identical when raw total correct scores were used for all variables(with the exception of the word reading skills composite, for which raw total scores would beinappropriate, as noted above).

To compare competing models, we used the Satorra-Bentler chi-square difference test withrobust maximum likelihood estimation (the MLR command in Mplus). This approach is robustto the potential deviations from normal theory assumptions previously noted (e.g., Chou, Bentler,& Satorra, 1991). In testing the significance of parameter estimates for the final model, we usednonparametric bootstrapped 95% confidence intervals (e.g., Efron & Tibshirani, 1993). These areparticularly important for testing indirect effects, for which traditional z statistics are known tobe biased (e.g., MacKinnon, Fairchild, & Fritz, 2007). For more detailed explanations of thesemethods, see Shrout and Bolger (2002) and Mallinckrodt, Abraham, Wei, and Russell (2006).

Likelihood ratio tests were used to compare the relative goodness of fit of the differing the-oretical models to the data. Model 1A fit the data significantly better than alternate Model 1Bin Grades 3 (Satorra-Bentler�χ2 = 10.77, �df = 1, p = .0010) and 4 (Satorra-Bentler�χ2

= 11.13, �df = 1, p = .0008), indicating that mediation was partial rather than full. Thiscomparison shows that a significant unique contribution of morphological awareness to reading

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MORPHOLOGICAL AWARENESS AND READING COMPREHENSION 441

Morphological

Awareness

Reading

Comprehension

Word Reading

Skills

Phonological

Awareness

Nonverbal

Ability

Controls

Age

Vocabulary

1A) Hypothesized Partial Mediation Model

Morphological

Awareness

Reading

Comprehension

Word Reading

Skills

Phonological

Awareness

Nonverbal

Ability

Controls

Age

Vocabulary

1B) Alternate Model: Full Mediation Model

Morphological

Awareness

Reading

Comprehension

Word Reading

Skills

Phonological

Awareness

Nonverbal

Ability

Controls

Age

Vocabulary

1C) Alternate Model: Morphological Awareness predicts

Reading Comprehension, but not Word Reading Skills

FIGURE 1 Hypothesized and alternate path analysis models for concur-rent relations among morphological awareness, word reading skills, andreading comprehension, controlling for vocabulary, phonological aware-ness, nonverbal reasoning, and age. Model 1A fit the data better thanModels 1B and 1C.

comprehension remains, after accounting for mediation by word reading skills. Model 1A alsofit the data better than alternate Model 1C in Grades 3 (Satorra-Bentler�χ2 = 15.58, �df = 1,p < .0001) and 4 (Satorra-Bentler�χ2 = 12.37, �df = 1, p = .0004). The hypothesized, partialmediation model (Model 1A) fit the data better than the two alternate models in each grade.

Results for the final, partial mediation models are presented in Table 3. In this table, boot-strapped 95% confidence intervals that do not cover 0 represent statistically significant effects.To interpret the magnitude of effects, we use Cohen’s (1992) rules of thumb for standard-ized regression coefficients, where .10 is small, .30 is moderate, and .50 and above is large.

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TABLE 3Selected Results From Final Fitted Path Analysis Models for Direct and Indirect Contributions of

Morphological Awareness to Reading Comprehension

Grade 3 Grade 4

Path β̂

Bootstrapped 95%CI β̂

Bootstrapped 95%CI

Direct effects on Reading ComprehensionMorphological Awareness 0.24 [0.06, 0.41] 0.30 [0.13, 0.46]Word Reading Skills 0.57 [0.38, 0.77] 0.36 [0.09, 0.58]Vocabulary 0.13 [0.002, 0.29] 0.22 [0.06, 0.36]Phonological Awareness −0.08 [–0.23, 0.09] −0.03 [–0.25, 0.18]Nonverbal Reasoning 0.08 [–0.07, 0.22] 0.15 [–0.03, 0.31]Age −0.05 [–0.17, 0.07] 0.04 [–0.11, 0.18]

Indirect effects on Reading ComprehensionMorphological Awareness 0.17 [0.06, 0.30] 0.12 [0.02, 0.24]

Direct effects on Word Reading SkillsMorphological Awareness 0.30 [0.15, 0.46] 0.33 [0.10, 0.53]Vocabulary −0.06 [–0.22, 0.13] 0.04 [–0.15, 0.22]Phonological Awareness 0.52 [0.36, 0.67] 0.36 [0.13, 0.56]Nonverbal Reasoning 0.11 [–0.06, 0.28] 0.07 [–0.14, 0.27]Age −0.04 [–0.16, 0.09] −0.02 [–0.18, 0.13]

Note. n = 100. CI = confidence interval. Because z scores were used in this set of analyses, the unstandardizedestimates of β̂ presented are the same as the standardized estimates of β̂ and can be compared across grades. Models alsoincluded covariances among predictors not shown here.

In both grades, morphological awareness had a significant, moderate effect on word readingskills (standardized coefficients = 0.30 in Grade 3, 0.33 in Grade 4; i.e., X to M in Baron &Kenny’s terms), which in turn had a significant moderate to large effect on reading compre-hension (Grade 3 standardized coefficients = 0.57, Grade 4 = 0.36; i.e., M to Y) yielding asignificant, small-to-moderate indirect effect (Grade 3 standardized coefficients = 0.17, Grade4 = 0.12). By “indirect effect,” we refer to the portion of the effect of morphological awarenesson reading comprehension that is mediated by word reading skills. In both grades, morphologicalawareness also had a significant, moderate unique effect on reading comprehension (standardizedcoefficients = 0.24 in Grade 3, 0.30 in Grade 4; i.e., X to Y), after controlling for this indirecteffect and the effects of the other controls. These estimates were similar in magnitude acrossthe two grades (see Table 3).1 In summary, we found that the relation between morphologicalawareness and reading comprehension was partially mediated by word reading skills.

1Two changes in the magnitudes of relations are worth noting. First, the unique relation between word readingskills and reading comprehension declined somewhat between Grade 3 and 4, which is consistent with developmentalmodels of reading (e.g., Hoover & Gough, 1990). Second, the standardized coefficient for the unique relation betweenphonological awareness and word reading skills also declined somewhat (from 0.52 to 0.36), which is also consistent withdevelopmental models for the role of phonological awareness in word reading skills (e.g., National Reading Panel, 2000).

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The Temporal Order of the Relationship Between Morphological Awareness andReading Comprehension

Our second research question concerned the temporal order of the relations between morpholog-ical awareness and reading comprehension. To address this question, we fitted the hypothesizedautoregressive model (Model 2A in Figure 2) and compared its goodness of fit to the alter-nate models (Model 2B, 2C, and 2D), which systematically excluded one or both cross-paths.To address this question, we control for confounding skills, including word reading skills at Grade3, to isolate the contributions of Grade 3 morphological awareness and reading comprehensionto later gains in these two skills. To capture gains over time (Singer & Willett, 2003), raw (total

G3 Reading

Comprehension

G4 Reading

Comprehension

G3 Phonological

Awareness

G3 Nonverbal

Ability

Controls

G3 Age

G3 Vocabulary

Model 2A) Hypothesized Autoregressive Model

G3

Morphological

Awareness

G4

Morphological

Awareness

G3 Word

Reading Skills

G3 Reading

Comprehension

G4 Reading

Comprehension

G3 Phonological

Awareness

G3 Nonverbal

Ability

Controls

G3 Age

G3 Vocabulary

Model 2B) Alternate Model

G3

Morphological

Awareness

G4

Morphological

Awareness

G3 Word

Reading Skills

G3 Reading

Comprehension

G4 Reading

Comprehension

G3 Phonological

Awareness

G3 Nonverbal

Ability

Controls

G3 Age

G3 Vocabulary

Model 2C) Alternate Model

G3

Morphological

Awareness

G4

Morphological

Awareness

G3 Word

Reading Skills

G3 Reading

Comprehension

G4 Reading

Comprehension

G3 Phonological

Awareness

G3 Nonverbal

Ability

Controls

G3 Age

G3 Vocabulary

Model 2D) Alternate Model

G3

Morphological

Awareness

G4

Morphological

Awareness

G3 Word

Reading Skills

FIGURE 2 Hypothesized and alternate path analysis models for longitu-dinal relations between morphological awareness and reading comprehen-sion, controlling for Grade 3 word reading skills, vocabulary, phonologicalawareness, nonverbal reasoning, and age. Model 2A fit the data better thanModels 2B, 2C, and 2D.

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TABLE 4Selected Results for Final Fitted Autoregressive Path Analysis Model for Contributions of Morphological

Awareness to Gains in Reading Comprehension and Reading Comprehension to Gains in MorphologicalAwareness

Path β̂ Standardized β̂

Bootstrapped 95%Confidence Intervals

for β̂

Effects on G4 Reading ComprehensionG3 Morphological Awareness 0.76 .16 [0.01, 1.56]G3 Reading Comprehension 0.51 .50 [0.27, 0.69]G3 Word Reading Skills 1.36 .19 [–0.03, 2.74]G3 Vocabulary 0.13 .10 [–0.06, 0.32]G3 Phonological Awareness −0.25 −.12 [–0.59, 0.07]G3 Nonverbal Reasoning 0.18 .15 [0.01, 0.33]G3 Age −0.01 −.003 [–0.29, 0.29]

Effects on G4 Morphological AwarenessG3 Reading Comprehension 0.05 .25 [0.01, 0.09]G3 Morphological Awareness 0.37 .43 [0.23, 0.51]G3 Word Reading Skills 0.10 .07 [–0.21, 0.44]G3 Vocabulary 0.02 .07 [–0.02, 0.05]G3 Phonological Awareness 0.04 .10 [–0.02, 0.10]G3 Nonverbal Reasoning 0.01 .04 [–0.03, 0.05]G3 Age −0.01 −.03 [–0.07, 0.04]

Note. n = 100. Model also included covariances among predictors not shown here. G = grade.

correct) scores were used in this set of analyses except for two measures. For the morphologi-cal awareness task, Rasch-based developmental scaled scores were used. For the Grade 3 wordreading skills composite, we used within-grade z scores for the reasons just described. We usedSatorra-Bentler chi-square difference test to compare models and determined if bootstrapped 95%confidence intervals covered 0 to evaluate the significance of individual parameters in the finalmodel.

Likelihood ratio tests showed that the hypothesized Model 2A fit the data significantlybetter than Model 2B (Satorra-Bentler�χ2 = 4.71, �df = 1, p = .0300), Model 2C (Satorra-Bentler�χ2 = 6.32, �df = 1, p = .0119), and Model 2D (Satorra-Bentler�χ2 = 11.49, �df =2, p = .0032). Results from the final autoregressive path analysis model are presented in Table 4.As we would expect, there are large autoregressive effects (0.50 for reading comprehension,0.43 for morphological awareness). Nevertheless, beyond these autoregressive effects, Grade3 morphological awareness had a significant, small-to-moderate effect (standardized regressionpath = .16) on Grade 4 reading comprehension, controlling for Grade 3 reading comprehension,word reading skills, vocabulary, phonological awareness, nonverbal ability, and age. Similarly,Grade 3 reading comprehension had a significant small to moderate effect (standardizedregression path = .25) on Grade 4 morphological awareness, controlling for Grade 3 morpho-logical awareness, word reading skills, vocabulary, phonological awareness, nonverbal ability,and age.

Subsequent analyses evaluated whether these two longitudinal relations were similar in mag-nitude. We compared a model (with z scores to put the two outcomes and two predictors on the

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MORPHOLOGICAL AWARENESS AND READING COMPREHENSION 445

same scale) in which the two cross-paths were constrained to have the same magnitude to a modelin which the two cross-paths were allowed to differ in magnitude (following Deacon et al., 2013).A nonsignificance difference in goodness of fit between these two models indicated that the twocross-paths did not differ significantly in magnitude (Satorra-Bentler �χ2 = 0.41, �df = 1, p =.5206). In summary, morphological awareness appears to support gains in reading comprehen-sion and reading comprehension supports gains in morphological awareness, both to a small tomoderate extent.

DISCUSSION

We evaluate two key questions on the relationship between morphological awareness and readingcomprehension. First, we evaluate the mediation of this relationship by the role of morphologicalawareness in facilitating word reading skills. Second, we evaluate whether morphologicalawareness supports gains in reading comprehension and/or vice versa. We examined these ques-tions by conducting a longitudinal study of children between Grades 3 and 4. This study includedcontrols for phonological awareness, vocabulary, age, and nonverbal ability.

Answering our first research question, morphological awareness had both a direct effect onreading comprehension and an indirect effect via word reading skills at each of Grades 3 and4. Word reading skills in this study were evaluated with single word identification and nonworddecoding. These findings of partial mediation suggest that morphological awareness helps chil-dren understand texts both through a direct relationship with reading comprehension and througha more indirect relationship by helping them to read individual words, which in turn supportsreading comprehension.

A picture of developmental shift emerges in these relationships when considering our resultsin concert with those of prior studies. There appears to be partial or complete mediationbetween morphological awareness and reading comprehension by word reading skills in middleelementary school, with direct effects only between morphological awareness and reading com-prehension by upper elementary school. In studies with children in Grades 2 to 4, evidence ofpartial mediation emerged in our study and complete mediation in two other studies that includedcontrols for broader oral language skill (Jarmulowicz et al., 2008; Proctor et al., 2012). Newstudies need to investigate the potential role of broader oral language skills in understanding therelationship between morphological awareness and reading comprehension. Direct effects onlybetween morphological awareness and reading comprehension were found in a study of chil-dren in Grade 6 (Kieffer & Lesaux, 2012a; see also Kieffer et al., 2013). Thus, there might bea developmental shift; children’s morphological awareness might initially support reading com-prehension through its effects on word reading skills (see also Deacon et al., 2013), with moredirect effects on reading comprehension for older readers, potentially as a result of the place ofmorphological awareness as a part of the broader language system (e.g., Perfetti et al., 2005).New studies are needed across reading development to confirm this potential picture.

As we consider the overall picture from the studies to date, we draw attention to two keyissues. First, one study does not fit with the developmental pattern described earlier. Kieffer andBox (2013) found evidence of both direct and indirect effects (partial mediation by word reading

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fluency) in a study of Grade 6 children. Given the range of controls and other mediators inves-tigated as well as the diversity in the samples included across this set of studies, we hesitate tomake strong claims about one study’s findings compared to those of others. Clearly we needan accumulation of high-quality evidence to separate out idiosyncratic findings from convergingpatterns. Second, we need to need to attend to the nature of the morphological awareness task.Findings of direct effects only, with no mediation by word reading fluency, emerged in a studythat presented the morphological awareness tasks in writing (Kieffer & Lesaux, 2012a). The useof a written format, even when it is accompanied by oral presentation, introduces a potentialconfound with word reading skill. This reduces the likelihood of finding indirect mediation bya separate measure of word reading skills because much of this variance would be subsumedwithin the morphological awareness score. It would be important for future studies to continue toinvestigate these questions, particularly with morphological awareness measures presented solelyin oral format.

In terms of our second research question, we found that morphological awareness supportedgains in reading comprehension just as reading comprehension supported gains in morphologicalawareness across Grades 3 to 4. The weight of these two paths was similar. Children appear to beable to draw on their morphological awareness to support increases in their reading comprehen-sion; the more they are able to manipulate the morphemes within words, the more progress theymake in understanding texts. In the other direction, there is also a role for reading comprehen-sion in developing children’s morphological awareness; it is likely that children who understandmore of the texts that they read are able to gain more from their reading experiences. Specificallyrelating to morphology, children might use their understanding of the meaning of the text in gen-eral to work out the morphemic parts of novel words that they encounter; cumulatively, theseexperiences appear to support growth in awareness of morphemes.

Findings of a potentially reciprocal relationship between morphological awareness and readingcomprehension both confirm and extend prior studies. Our findings that morphological awarenesssupports gains in reading comprehension concur with those of three prior studies (Deacon &Kirby, 2004; Foorman et al., 2012; Kruk & Bergman, 2013) with children across Grades 1 to12. Our finding that reading comprehension skill supports increases in morphological awarenessextends the one prior study conducted with children between Grades 1 and 3 (Kruk & Bergman,2013). Our work brings this evidence to the middle elementary school years, a period known tobe critical in the transition to reading to learn (Chall, 1983).

Our findings that morphological awareness predicts gains in reading comprehension suggestthat morphological awareness deserves a place in models of reading comprehension, and ourfindings of both indirect and direct roles for morphological awareness in reading comprehensionhelp to conceptualize this specific role. First, our findings support Perfetti et al.’s (2005) recentsuggestion of two roles for morphology. As a part of the lexicon, morphology impacts word read-ing skills through more accurate reading of morphologically complex words and, in turn, readingcomprehension. As a part of the language system, morphology impacts on text comprehensiondirectly. There are also other ways in which these two paths could be conceptualized. In termsof the indirect relationship, an awareness of morphemes could help children decode individualwords (e.g., Carlisle, 1995; Deacon et al., 2013), especially the morphologically complex wordscommon in upper elementary school texts (Nagy & Anderson, 1984; Nagy, Osborn, Winsor, &O’Flahavan, 1993). This increased ability to read key complex words could then support com-prehension of texts. In terms of the direct relationship, morphological awareness has been argued

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to reflect the ability to bring together semantic, phonological, and syntactic information (e.g.,Carlisle, 1995), thereby supporting children in the integration necessary in reading comprehen-sion (e.g., Nagy, 2007). Alternatively, morphological awareness could help children to understandthe meanings of complex words within texts (e.g., Anglin, 1993), thereby helping them to under-stand the meaning of the whole passage. We believe that the mechanism(s) underlying the directand indirect relationships are worthy of further investigation.

In terms of education, our findings reinforce the importance of including morphological aware-ness in reading instruction (e.g., Bowers, Kirby, & Deacon, 2010; Carlisle, 2010; Goodwin &Ahn, 2010; Nunes & Bryant, 2006; Reed, 2008). Evidence of its role in children’s develop-ment of reading comprehension suggests that such instruction could have cumulative effects;increases in morphological awareness could support increases in reading comprehension overtime. Intervention studies would add much needed evidence to our argument that morphologicalawareness is responsible for a part of children’s gains in reading comprehension (e.g., Bowerset al., 2010), just as their reading comprehension drives a part of their increasing morphologicalawareness. Intervention studies demonstrating the first relationship are beginning to emerge; weare not aware of studies evaluating the other direction.

We also need to consider limitations. First, we used only one morphological awareness task ina single format (of analogy). It had acceptable, albeit slightly low, reliability (see also Carlisle,2011; Kieffer & Lesaux, 2012b), particularly in Grade 4. The inclusion of two measures in differ-ent formats and stability in items across testing time points would improve validity. By their verynature, analogy tasks tap general reasoning skills, hence our control for nonverbal ability. Notably,even 4-year-old children can perform item analogies (Goswami & Brown, 1990). Second, PassageComprehension is more highly correlated with word reading skills than some other measures ofreading comprehension (Keenan, Betjemann, & Olson, 2008). This likely reduced the estimateof the mediation by word reading skills. Third, other measures of word reading skill would beimportant mediators to evaluate because mediation might differ between real- (Kieffer & Lesaux,2012a) and nonword reading (Jarmulowicz et al., 2008) and between accuracy (Jarmulowiczet al., 2008) and fluency measures (Kieffer & Lesaux, 2012a), with these relationships poten-tially shifting with development. Finally, future studies might include other control measures.Working memory might account for some of the relationship between morphological awarenessand reading comprehension (Cain, 2006; Yuill, Oakhill, & Parkin, 1989). Also, including listen-ing comprehension would evaluate if morphological awareness operates separately from broaderoral language skills (Gough & Tunmer, 1986; see e.g., Kirby & Savage, 2008). Interpretationneeds to take into account these limitations.

In conclusion, our findings add to our understanding of the way in which morphologi-cal awareness supports children’s reading comprehension in Grades 3 and 4. It appears todo so by increasing children’s ability to read individual words, as well as by directly affect-ing their understanding of texts. Further, morphological awareness plays a role in children’sgains in reading comprehension between Grades 3 and 4. Reciprocally, reading comprehen-sion supports their improvements in morphological awareness across this period. These findingsencourage continued investigation into the place of morphological awareness in models of readingcomprehension.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We are thankful for the support from the wonderful children and school staff in the AnnapolisValley and South Shore Regional School Boards, in particular the children and staff at BayviewCommunity School, Center Consolidated School, Chester District School, Lunenburg Academy,Newport Station District School, and Windsor Forks District School.

FUNDING

We are grateful to the two agencies that funded this research, with grants awarded to the firstauthor: the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the March of DimesBasil O’Connor Starter Scholar Research Award.

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MORPHOLOGICAL AWARENESS AND READING COMPREHENSION 451

APPENDIX

TABLE A1Items From the Word Analogy Morphological Awareness Task

Item No. inGrade 3

Item Numberin Grade 4 Item M-Type

Practice a Practice a run: ran:: walk: walked IPractice b Practice b child: children:: bird: birds IPractice c Practice c sleep: sleepy:: cloud: cloudy D1 1 tall: tallest:: strong: strongest I2 2 smell: smelly:: chill: chilly D3 NA art: artist:: write: writer D4 3 luck: lucky:: curl: curly D5 NA cover: coverage:: store: storage D6 4 chew: chewing:: bite: biting I7 5 duck: ducks:: goose: geese I8 NA intelligent: intelligence:: obedient: obedience D9 6 sweet: sweetness:: strong: strength D10 NA serve: servant:: clean: cleaner D11 7 wide: width:: deep: depth D12 8 doll: dolls:: mouse: mice I13 9 scrape: scraped:: scratch: scratched I14 10 mad: madness:: true: truth D15 NA swim: swimmer:: farm: farmer D16 11 sad: sadly:: mild: mildly D17 12 creep: crept:: sing: sang I18 NA build: builder:: science: scientist D19 NA wreck: wreckage:: shrink: shrinkage D20 13 rude: rudely:: bold: boldly D21 14 check: checking:: fly: flying I

Note. The correct answer (on which scores were based) is in italics. NA = not administered; M-type = Morphologicaltype; I = Inflectional item; D = Derivational item.

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