The influence of morphological awareness on reading and writing: a systematic review

Silva, Ainoã Athaide Macedo; Martins-Reis, Vanessa de Oliveira

doi:10.1590/2317-1782/20172016032

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Systematic Review • CoDAS 29 (1) • 2017 • https://doi.org/10.1590/2317-1782/20172016032 linkcopy

The influence of morphological awareness on reading and writing: a systematic review

Authorship SCIMAGO INSTITUTIONS RANKINGS

Purpose this study aimed to perform a systematic review of national and international studies about the relationship between morphological awareness, reading/writing, reading comprehension, and spelling.

Research strategies a search for national and international literature was carried out using databases Medline (via PubMed) and Portal de Periódicos da Capes (Eric, PsycINFO, LILACS, SciELO) from August to September 2015.

Selection criteria the inclusion criteria were: studies that answered the guiding question and addressed the subject matter established by the descriptors and keywords. Studies with animals, laboratories, opinion/expert pieces, case series, case reports and review studies were excluded.

Data analysis the following markers were considered: type and objective of the study, the skills related to morphological awareness (reading, writing, reading comprehension and spelling), tests performed, and their main results.

Results the search carried out in the pre-established databases with descriptors and free terms resulted in 203 articles. The search in PubMed resulted in 81 studies, and in Portal de Periódicos Capes, 122. Of the total, 154 were excluded according to the title and abstract, whereas 39 were excluded upon reading the full text. This allowed for the analysis of 10 articles.

Conclusion children with better scores in the morphological awareness test show better results in reading and writing across all school grades.

Keywords
Speech Therapy; Language; Children; Handwriting; Reading Comprehension

Author	Year	Location	Design	Sample	Instruments	Results
Guimaraes SRK, Paula FV, Mota MMPE, Barbosa VR⁽¹⁸^).	2014	Brazil	Analytical observational, cross-sectional	72 children in the 3^rd, 4^th and 5^th grades of a public school.	Assessment of morphological awareness - Grammatical categorization task (Sá, 1999, 2006), Writing assignment (reproduction of storybook “O pote vazio”) Inflectional and derivational grapho-morphological task (paula, 2007) and reading comprehension, measured by the Close procedure.	Morphological awareness influenced reading and spelling in general. In the three groups assessed, students with better performance in morphological awareness presented better results in spelling and reading.
Kirby JR, Deacon SH, Bowers PN, Izenberg L, Wade-Woolley L, Parrila R⁽¹⁹⁾	2012	Canada	Analytical observational, Cohort	102 children, between 5 and 8 years old, from public schools. Assessed in kindergarten, 1^st, 2^nd grades and, lastly, in 3rd grade.	Assessment of vocabulary with pictures (Peabody Test- III), Morphological Processing Test (analogy of words), Phonological Processing (CTOPP), Reading of words, phrases (Woodcock, 1998), Speed of reading and identification of words (Test of Word Reading Efficiency (Torgesen, Wagner, & Rashotte, 1999), Reading of texts (GORT 4; Wiederholt & Bryant, 2001).	There was a significant correlation between morphological awareness and reading of words, accuracy in reading and comprehension, particularly for the 3rd grade. The study also stresses the importance of morphological awareness tests in the battery of reading and writing tests.
Apel K, Diehm E⁽²⁰⁾	2014	USA	Analytical observational, Case-control	151 students in kindergarten, 1^st and 2^nd grades of a public school, randomly divided into case and control groups.	Test of silent reading comprehension (Test of Silent Reading Efficiency and Comprehension -TOSREC; Wagner, Torgesen, Rashotte, & Pearson, 2010), grammatical analogy, creation of neologisms, identification of affixes (Apel, Brimo, et al. 2013), Identification of derivations and inflections (Carlisle, 2000), writing of words and pseudowords.	Students in the case group from the three grades assessed presented significantly better results post-intervention, compared to their peers.
Mota MMPE⁽²¹⁾	2011	Brazil	Analytical observational, cross-sectional	52 elementary school children in 2^nd and 3^rd grade of a federal public school.	Grammatical analogy tests (adapted from Nunes and peers, 1997), morphological decision, test of academic performance-TDE, digit span test WISC III.	Morphological awareness was poor, but there was a significant correlation with reading. The relationship between morphological processing and reading is maintained, after controlling the other variables, phonological processing significantly contributes to reading.
McCutchen D, Stull S, Herrera BL, Lotas S, Evans SP⁽²²⁾	2014	USA	Analytical observational, Case-control	170 elementary school students in 5^th grade from public schools, 95 composed the case group and underwent a morphological intervention, while 75 composed the control group.	Reading of words (Woodcock Reading Mastery Tests-Revised -WRMT-R), oral vocabulary test (Woodcock Johnson III Tests of Achievement), Assessment of morphological awareness by means of writing combined sentences.	Results show statistically significant positive effects for the intervention group after morphological training in all of the skills tested.
Miranda LC, Mota MMPE⁽²³⁾	2013	Brazil	Analytical observational, cross-sectional	57 elementary school children in 2^nd and 3^rd grade of a federal public school.	Testing of knowledge of correspondence between letter and sound; subtraction of phoneme and Spoonerism (Sternberg, 2000), Intelligence test, (subtest digits- WISC), Academic performance test – TDE (Stein, 1994) and morphological awareness test - grammatical analogy task.	The grammatical analogy task was significantly correlated with reading of words, upon controlling the other variables. However, it must be more closely studied since upon removal of the variance attributed to knowledge of correspondence between letters and sounds measured by the spoonerism task, the morphological awareness scores are no longer significant.
Gutiérrez CS⁽²⁴⁾	2013	Spain	Analytical observational, cross-sectional	66 (Hispanic) students in 3^rd, 5th and 6^th grades of two private schools.	Writing by dictation (paradigmatic writing with variation of verb tenses).	At least in the fifth grade, students showed to rely on morphological awareness to write verb tense paradigms in Spanish language. There was a progressing improvement in the amount of errors of the grades tested. The study found limitations in the statistical analysis and generalizations, since morphological awareness tests were not applied for comparison of data, in addition to other tests for vocabulary and phonological awareness control.
Gilbert JK, Goodwin AP, Compton DL, Kearns DM⁽²⁵⁾	2014	USA	Analytical observational, cross-sectional	169 students in 5^th grade of elementary school.	General academic knowledge (Woodcock-Johnson III), morphological awareness (morphological decision, creation of neologisms and grammatical analogy), reading of multi-syllable words, reading comprehension (Qualitative Reading Inventory QRI-3; Leslie & Caldwell, 2001), receptive vocabulary test with pictures (Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test, Dunn & Dunn, 2007).	There was a significant correlation between morphological awareness and reading of multi-syllable words only for children with reading difficulty, but not for children with higher performance in reading, proving to be a compensation strategy for “low-level readers”.
Deacon SH, Benere J, Pasquarella A⁽²⁶⁾	2013	USA	Analytical observational, cross-sectional	100 children, tested in 2^nd and 3^rd grades.	Test of vocabulary with pictures (Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test– Third Edition PPVT-III; Dunn & Dunn, 1997), phonological awareness, (based on the proposed by Rosner and Simons, 1971), reading (Woodcock Reading Mastery Test–Revised) morphological awareness (analogy of sentences, analogy of words (based on Nunes et al., 1997).	Morphological awareness and reading accuracy presented a statistically significant correlation, regardless of phonological awareness and vocabulary variables controlled.
Foorman BR, Petscher Y, Bishop MD⁽²⁷⁾	2012	USA	Analytical observational, cross-sectional	4780 children from the 3^rd to 10^th grades of public schools.	Derivational and inflectional morphological knowledge by sentence completion (Foorman & Petscher, 2010), spelling by dictation, reading (Comprehensive Assessment Test -FCAT; Florida Department of Education, 2001, 2005).	Strong relationship between morphological knowledge and reading comprehension across all grades, except for the 10th.

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