Applied Psycholinguistics 25 (2004), 223–238

Printed in the United States of America

DOI: 10.1017.S0124716404001117

Morphological awareness: Just

“more phonological”? The roles of
morphological and phonological
awareness in reading development

S. HÉLÈNE DEACON
Oxford University

JOHN R. KIRBY
Queen’s University at Kingston

ADDRESS FOR CORRESPONDENCE

S. Hélène Deacon, Psychology Department, Dalhousie University, Life Sciences Centre, 1355
Oxford Street, Halifax, Nova Scotia, B3H 4J1, Canada. E-mail: helene.deacon@dal.ca

ABSTRACT
Given the morphophonemic nature of the English orthography, surprisingly few studies have examined
the roles of morphological and phonological awareness in reading. This 4-year longitudinal study
(Grades 2–5) compared these two factors in three aspects of reading development: pseudoword reading,
reading comprehension, and single word reading. Morphological awareness contributed significantly
to pseudoword reading and reading comprehension, after controlling prior measures of reading ability,
verbal and nonverbal intelligence, and phonological awareness. This contribution was comparable to
that of phonological awareness and remained 3 years after morphological awareness was assessed. In
contrast, morphological awareness rarely contributed significantly to single word reading. We argue
that these results provide evidence that morphological awareness has a wide-ranging role in reading
development, one that extends beyond phonological awareness.

A wealth of research has demonstrated that children’s early phonological aware-

ness is related to progress in learning to read (for reviews, see Adams, 1990;
Goswami & Bryant, 1990; National Reading Panel, 2000; Snow, Burns, & Griffin,
1998). This relationship has survived controls of intelligence, vocabulary, and so-
cioeconomic status; and there is evidence that it is causal (Bradley & Bryant, 1983;
Wagner, Torgesen & Rashotte, 1994). English orthography is morphophonemic:
it preserves semantic relationships among words and effectively predicts pronun-
ciation (Chomsky & Halle, 1968). Therefore, one would expect that sensitivity to
both phonemes and morphemes should predict reading development. The goal of
the current research is to establish the nature of the link between morphological
awareness and children’s reading development. Specifically, we aim to determine
(a) if morphological awareness contributes to reading development, beyond phono-
logical awareness and intelligence; (b) if this contribution differs according to the
© 2004 Cambridge University Press 0142-7164/04 $12.00

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Deacon & Kirby: Morphological and phonological awareness in reading

type of reading; and (c) if the relative involvement of morphological awareness

changes over time.
Morphological awareness refers to children’s “conscious awareness of the mor-
phemic structure of words and their ability to reflect on and manipulate that struc-
ture” (Carlisle, 1995, p. 194). Morphemes are the smallest units of meaning within
words; for example, electricity is made up of two morphemes: the root electric
and the suffix -ity. Experimental research by Berko (1958) suggested that children
as young as 4 years of age can add certain simple inflections to certain pseu-
dowords. Clark and Cohen (1984) and Jones (1991) showed that kindergarten
and first grade children display some competence with simple derivations that
do not involve phonological shifts. Older children adeptly tackle more complex
derivational relations, such as between electric and electricity, by about the fourth
grade (Carlisle, 1988; Tyler & Nagy, 1989). In sum, morphological awareness of
inflections and simple derivations might emerge early whereas an understanding
of more complex derivational relations may come into place later.
Morphological awareness could be helpful in a range of reading tasks. In single
word reading, for example, a child attempting to pronounce the ea in reading
and in react would do well to refer to morphemic boundaries. Morphology might
also be helpful in uncovering the meaning of single words. For example, the
base and affix morphemes within reading and react provide some indication of
their meaning. Morphological “problem solving” might also play an important
part in constructing the meaning of a text. Further, it is possible, but somewhat
less intuitive, that morphological awareness plays a role in pseudoword reading.
Although pseudowords have been traditionally used to tap the ability to analyze
words into component sounds, these words potentially have morphemic structures.
For example, the pseudoword lagician could be interpreted as containing a root
lagic and suffix ian. In sum, morphological awareness may play separate roles in
individual word decoding, reading comprehension, and pseudoword reading.
Brittain (1970) was the first to examine the role of morphological awareness in
reading. Seven- and 8-year-old children performed a task in which they inflected
pseudowords (based on Berko, 1958). Even after controlling for intelligence,
Brittain found a significant relationship between performance on this task and
general reading achievement. Leong (1989) reached a similar conclusion. He gave
9- to 11-year-old children a Production task (based on Carlisle, 1988) in which they
generated the appropriate base or derived form of a word for a sentence context.
Reaction times discriminated well between readers of differing abilities on the
reading subtests of the Canadian Test of Basic Skills. Similarly, Mahony (1994)
found a positive relationship between morphological awareness and adolescents’
reading comprehension, as assessed by SAT scores. In this experiment, morpho-
logical awareness was assessed by the Derivational Suffix test, in which children
chose one of four words or pseudowords to complete a sentence. These studies
establish that there is a general connection between morphological awareness and
reading achievement.
More recent studies have gone further in examining alternative explanations
for the relationship between morphological awareness and real and pseudoword
reading by including variables such as vocabulary or verbal short-term memory.
Singson, Mahony, and Mann (2000, Experiment 1) examined verbal short-term

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memory in a study with 98 children in Grades 3–6 (ages 8–12). Morphological

awareness (measured with the Derivational Suffix Test) accounted for 5% of the
variance in reading, after controlling for verbal short-term memory. In another
article, Mahony, Singson and Mann (2000, Experiment 1) report on the role of
vocabulary in the relationship between morphological awareness and reading.
This time morphological awareness was assessed using a Judgment task (based on
Carlisle & Nomanbhoy, 1993), in which children had to distinguish morphologi-
cally related word pairs (e.g., teach/teacher) from foils (e.g., corn/corner). Mor-
phological awareness correlated with pseudoword reading and word identification
(r = .25–.33), after partialing out vocabulary. Neither of these analyses removed
age or grade, which may have increased the size of the correlations. Fowler and
Liberman (1995) also controlled for vocabulary in their study with younger poor
readers (ages 7–9). Performance on a production task successfully predicted single
word reading and pseudoword reading, after controlling for vocabulary and age.
These three studies point to a relationship between morphological awareness and
reading of words and pseudowords.
An additional and important question is whether morphological awareness is
related to reading comprehension. Carlisle (2000) addressed this issue in a compre-
hensive study with 8- and 11-year-old children. Her study included three morpho-
logical awareness tasks: Production, morphological problem solving (based on
Anglin, 1993), and reading of morphologically complex words (such as move-
ment and easily). Performance on these three tasks accounted for large por-
tions of the variance (41–55%) in reading vocabulary and comprehension. As
in Mahony et al.’s (2000) analyses, neither age nor any ability variables were
controlled.
These studies point to a reliable connection between morphological awareness
and reading and show that this effect remains (at around 5%) after controlling for
the individual variables of vocabulary or verbal short-term memory. These controls
address the potential confound of verbal intelligence, which is plausibly related to
measures of linguistic awareness and to reading. Only one study, that by Brittain
(1970), controlled for the combination of verbal and nonverbal intelligence. Con-
trolling for both variables limits the possibility that the link between morphological
awareness and reading is due to some form of overall ability, which, in turn, may
be a function of a host of other variables. In particular, measures of nonverbal
intelligence most often assess the ability to perform novel tasks (which could be
relevant to morphological and phonological awareness tasks) and process spatial
relationships (which could be relevant for some reading measures). Similarly, given
the established role of phonological awareness in reading development, it is critical
to establish that morphological awareness is not simply “more phonological”—
that is, that the relationship between morphological awareness and reading oper-
ates independently of phonological awareness. Thus, studies that control for both
phonological awareness and verbal and nonverbal intelligence are needed.
There is support for the independence of the relationship between morphological
awareness and single word reading. Carlisle and Nomanbhoy (1993) assessed the
morphological awareness (with the Judgment and Production tasks) of a large
group of 6-year-old children. The Production task accounted for an additional 4%
in single word reading, above and beyond the 37% accounted for by phonological

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Deacon & Kirby: Morphological and phonological awareness in reading

awareness. Shankweiler et al. (1995) found similar results with a group of poor
readers who were 7–9 years of age. In this study, the Production task contributed
5% of the variance in single word reading, after phoneme awareness and IQ
were controlled. In a study with older children (in Grades 3–6), Mahony et al.
(2000, Experiment 2) found that morphological awareness (assessed with the
Judgment task) contributed 5%, after phonological awareness and vocabulary,
to the variance in pseudoword reading and single word reading. Singson et al.
(2000, Experiment 2) reached a similar conclusion with children of the same
age. Morphological awareness, assessed with a grammaticality judgment task,
contributed 4%, above phonological awareness and vocabulary, to the pseudoword
reading and single word reading. Further, between Grades 3 and 6, the contribution
of phonological awareness gradually attenuated whereas that of morphological
awareness increased. These results suggest that morphological awareness plays
a unique role in single word reading and that this role may increase in later
development.
This proposal has important educational implications, and it needs to be tested
in a longitudinal design. Longitudinal studies allow for the study of developmen-
tal and autoregressive effects. Further, with the inclusion of appropriate control
measures, they can effectively establish relationships between variables. They do
not, however, establish that these relationships are causal.
Carlisle (1995) conducted one of the few longitudinal studies in this field. In
kindergarten and in Grade 1, children were given the Production task. In Grade 1,
they were also given a phonological awareness test and the Judgment morpho-
logical awareness task. Reading measures (pseudoword reading and reading com-
prehension) were taken in Grade 2. While there was no relationship between
kindergarten morphological awareness and reading, Grade 1 measures did con-
tribute significantly to reading. Morphological awareness (assessed with the Pro-
duction task) was most predictive of reading comprehension, accounting for 10%
of the variance after phonological awareness. Phonological awareness was more
strongly predictive of pseudoword reading, absorbing 10% of the variance after
morphological awareness. Although no other control factors were included in the
regression equations, these results are consistent with the hypothesis that mor-
phological awareness plays a role in both reading comprehension and decoding.
Further, they suggest that morphological awareness emerges as a better predictor
of reading comprehension than of pseudoword reading.
Studies of reading development have included a range of measures of mor-
phological awareness from production of correct inflected and derived forms to
the judgment of morphological relationships. The success of the analogy task in
spelling research (Nunes, Bryant, & Bindman, 1997a, 1997b) makes it a good
candidate for use in reading research. In the Sentence Analogy task, children
are given two example sentences, such as “Tom helps Mary” and “Tom helped
Mary.” They are asked to carry out the same kind of transformation on another
sentence, such as “Tom sees Mary.” This task assesses the productive ability to
manipulate morphemes. Research in other domains indicates that preschool chil-
dren, and even infants, are capable of analogical reasoning (e.g., Chen, Sanchez,
& Campbell, 1997; Goswami, 1995), which suggests that analogies are accessible
to children. Given the substantial development in knowledge of derivations during

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elementary school (e.g., Carlisle, 1988; Tyler & Nagy, 1989), measures of inflec-
tional morphology, such as the past tense, may provide a more stable base to use as a
predictor variable, as suggested by Brittain (1970). Further, production of the past
tense may be particularly informative; it is argued to be an especially sensitive
indicator of language difficulties (e.g., Marchman, Wulfeck, & Weismer, 1999;
Rice, 1997). Thus, an analogy task with past tense morphemes offers a potentially
useful measure of morphological awareness.
From our review of the literature, it seems clear that morphological awareness
has a role in reading development. However, the nature of that connection is
unclear. There are three specific questions that remain unanswered and these are
the foci of the current study. First, does morphological awareness make a significant
contribution to reading development, beyond verbal and nonverbal intelligence and
phonological awareness? Second, does morphological awareness make a greater
contribution to reading comprehension than to single word or pseudoword reading?
Third, does the contribution of morphological awareness increase over reading
development?
We followed the development of a group of 7-year-old children over the course
of 4 years. This longitudinal design allowed the inclusion of stringent control vari-
ables, as well as the examination of changes in the contribution of variables over
time. We measured morphological and phonological awareness in Grade 2, as well
as verbal and nonverbal intelligence. In Grades 2–5, the children completed three
reading tasks: single word reading, pseudoword reading, and reading comprehen-
sion. Our analyses compared the independent contributions of morphological and
phonological awareness to the three measures of reading ability at each grade, after
controlling for verbal and nonverbal intelligence and prior measures of reading.

METHOD
Participants
The participants were 143 children in Grade 2 from a broad range of schools
in Kingston, Ontario, Canada. Schools were selected to represent a broad range
of socioeconomic conditions. All children who returned signed parental consent
forms and who were able to understand the instructions were allowed to participate.
Attrition reduced the sample in Grades 3, 4, and 5 to 130, 114, and 103, respectively.
The most common reason for attrition was that a child had moved out of the area
served by the school boards that had given permission for the study to take place.
Each year the children remaining in the sample were compared statistically to
those who left; none of these differences were statistically significant. Analyses
with the data from the 103 participants who remained with the study until Grade 5
are reported here. The results of analyses with all available children at each grade
were comparable. In Grade 2, the mean age of the participants was 88.5 months
(SD = 3.50), and 57 (55.3%) of them were male.

Procedure
Tests were administered individually to the participants in a quiet room in their
schools.

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Deacon & Kirby: Morphological and phonological awareness in reading

Measures
Phonological awareness task. Phonological awareness was measured in Grade 2
with a sound oddity task, adapted from Bradley and Bryant’s (1985) rhyme oddity
task. In each trial, the child had to choose which of four orally presented words
differed from the others by one sound (e.g., bud, bun, bus, rug). There were 30
items, 10 each for the word-initial, word-medial, and word-final positions. Prior
to each set of 10 trials, there were 2 practice trials.
Morphological awareness task. Morphological awareness was measured in
Grade 2 with the Nunes et al. (1997a, 1997b) Sentence Analogy task. For exam-
ple, “Peter plays at school. Peter played at school. Peter works at home. .”
Children were first given a practice trial; if they did not provide the correct answer,
the example was explained to them. The 8 items in this task all involved regular
and irregular past tense verbs.
Verbal and nonverbal intelligence measures. Two tests from the Das–Naglieri
Cognitive Assessment System (Naglieri & Das, 1997) were used in Grade 2 to
measure verbal and nonverbal intelligence. Figure Memory asks the participants
to identify a previously seen simple figure in a more complex figure. In each item,
children were shown a two- or three-dimensional geometric figure for 5 s after
which the figure was removed and children were presented with a response page
containing the original design embedded in a larger and more complex pattern.
Children were asked to identify the original design by tracing it with a pencil. For
a response to be scored correct, all lines of the original design had to be traced
without any omissions or additions. There were 25 items, but the task was discon-
tinued after four consecutive failures and the participant’s score was the number
of items completed correctly. Visual–Spatial Relations (Naglieri & Das, 1997)
consists of 27 items in which children are asked to identify which picture from a
set corresponds to an orally presented phrase or sentence (e.g., “The ball under
the table”). Each item has six drawings and the question is printed at the bottom
of the page. Items involved both objects and shapes arranged in different spatial
configurations. The examiner read the question aloud to the child, who was asked
to select the drawing that matched the verbal description. Administration ended
after four consecutive incorrect responses. The participant’s score was the total
number of items answered correctly within the 30-s time limit per item. Naglieri
and Das (1997) report correlations of .52 and .62 between Figure Memory and
Verbal–Spatial Relations with the CAS Full Scale IQ estimate in the standardiza-
tion sample. The factor represented by these two measures correlated at .43 and .50
with SAT Verbal and Mathematics scores, respectively (see Naglieri & Das, 1997,
for details). In our analyses, we entered the raw scores for the Figure Memory
and Visual–Spatial Relations tasks as a block, without creating a composite, thus
controlling for any aspects of either that are related to reading. The two measures
were correlated at .32, and each correlated significantly ( p < .001) with each of the
outcome variables (see Table 1).

Reading measures. Three subtests from the Woodcock (1987) Reading Mastery
Tests—Revised were used to assess reading in Grades 2–5; the Grade 2 scores were

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Table 1. Correlations of morphological and phonological awareness (Grade 2), the two measures of intelligence (Grade 2), and the reading
outcome measures (Grades 2–5)

FM2 VSR2 PA2 MA2 PW2 SW2 RC2 PW3 SW3 RC3 PW4 SW4 RC4 PW5 SW5 RC5

FM2 —
VSR2 .320 —
PA2 .485 .523 —
MA2 .302 .362 .567 —
PW2 .375 .446 .641 .651 —
SW2 .393 .526 .689 .644 .886 —
RC2 .440 .550 .706 .702 .852 .922 —
PW3 .365 .470 .705 .655 .844 .841 .834 —
SW3 .421 .513 .713 .648 .829 .919 .887 .896 —
RC3 .433 .515 .695 .639 .679 .790 .828 .814 .896 —
PW4 .377 .484 .736 .686 .788 .821 .810 .910 .885 .849 —
SW4 .431 .522 .725 .655 .777 .872 .850 .886 .945 .887 .897 —
RC4 .466 .524 .677 .659 .588 .727 .742 .706 .816 .840 .762 .854 —
PW5 .388 .411 .660 .649 .708 .747 .750 .876 .837 .837 .886 .884 .759 —
SW5 .455 .519 .727 .611 .748 .819 .804 .867 .914 .866 .868 .945 .833 .868 —
RC5 .460 .512 .654 .614 .601 .710 .717 .681 .795 .832 .699 .822 .850 .744 .819 —

Note: N = 103. The numeral at the end of each variable name indicates the grade in which it was measured. FM, figure memory; VSR,
verbal–spatial relations; PA, phonological awareness; MA, morphological awareness; PW, pseudoword reading; SW, single word reading; RC,
reading comprehension. For all correlations, p ≤ .001.
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Table 2. Means, standard deviations, and range for Grade 2 predictor measures

Mean Grade Standard

Measure Equivalent Mean Deviation Range

Figure memory N/A 9.32 2.43 4–15

Verbal–spatial relations N/A 15.64 3.00 8–26
Phonological awareness (max of 30) N/A 20.77 6.57 4–30
Morphological awareness (max of 8) N/A 3.21 1.89 0–8
Pseudoword reading 1.8 13.32 10.51 0–37
Single word reading 2.1 39.65 18.98 5–88
Reading comprehension 1.9 19.21 10.50 1–41

used as autoregressors, and the Grade 3, 4, and 5 scores were used as outcome
variables. Form G was used in Grades 2 and 4, Form H in Grades 3 and 5. Word
Attack measures participants’ ability to apply phonic and structural analysis skills
in pronouncing pseudowords or low frequency words that are not recognizable by
sight (e.g., dee, mancingful, apt). We used it as a measure of pseudoword reading.
Word Identification required the participant to read isolated words aloud (e.g., is,
you, and). We used it as a measure of single word reading. Passage Comprehension
requires the participant to read a short passage (usually two to three lines) and
identify a key missing word (e.g., “The fresh snow had been piled into a huge drift
along the fence. Larry sank into it up to his waist, but his father was able to work
his way through the and Larry followed his path.”). This cloze task was used
to measure reading comprehension.

RESULTS
Means and standard deviations for all predictors (measured in Grade 2) and for
all outcome measures (measured in Grades 3–5) are given in Tables 2 and 3,
respectively. The mean grade equivalent scores for the reading measures are also
shown in these tables. The reliability for the morphological awareness measure
was α = .64, and the correlations between the three components of the phonolog-
ical awareness measure were high (initial–medial r = .70, medial–final r = .65,
initial–final r = .76). The skewness values were within the “safe” range for both
morphological (.397) and phonological (−.527) awareness. Correlations between
morphological and phonological awareness, the reading outcome measures, and
the two measures of intelligence are shown in Table 1.
We used hierarchical regression analyses to determine the effects of phonologi-
cal and morphological awareness upon reading. Prior to conducting these analyses,
we looked for univariate and bivariate outliers. There were no univariate outliers.
None of the small number of bivariate outliers would increase the relationship
between the predictor variables and the outcome measures.
In the first set of analyses, we controlled for verbal and nonverbal intelligence
and the autoregressor. In each case, the autoregressor was the Grade 2 score on
the same reading measure. By controlling for intelligence and autoregressors, we
in effect controlled for general intelligence and for all effects upon reading ability
prior to Grade 2. Two hierarchical regression analyses were performed for each

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Table 3. Means, standard deviations, and range for outcome measures in Grades 3, 4,
and 5

Mean Grade Standard

Measure Equivalent Mean Deviation Range

Pseudoword reading
Grade 3 2.4 19.84 11.31 0–39
Grade 4 2.9 24.50 9.91 1–41
Grade 5 4.0 28.63 9.77 1–42
Single word reading
Grade 3 3.2 55.33 17.26 12–93
Grade 4 3.9 62.33 14.13 19–90
Grade 5 4.9 70.9 12.50 33–90
Reading comprehension
Grade 3 2.6 28.29 9.82 3–48
Grade 4 3.3 33.09 8.19 8–55
Grade 5 4.4 38.75 7.68 13–53

of the Grade 3, 4, and 5 measures, the first examining the effect of morphological
awareness after controlling for intelligence, the autoregressor, and phonological
awareness and the second examining the effect of phonological awareness after
controlling for intelligence, the autoregressor, and morphological awareness. We
deal with each reading variable in turn.
In the second set of analyses, we controlled for verbal and nonverbal intelligence
(but not for the autoregressor). Again, two hierarchical regression analyses were
performed for each of the Grade 3, 4, and 5 measures, the first examining the effect
of morphological awareness after controlling for intelligence and phonological aw-
areness and the second examining the effect of phonological awareness after con-
trolling for intelligence and morphological awareness. The results from the second
set of analyses are not reported in detail; instead, they are summarized in the text.
In the analyses that follow, we report changes in the R 2 value for each step in
each model. Although not shown in the analyses, each of the intelligence measures
made a significant ( p < .05) unique contribution in each of the analyses.

Pseudoword reading
The analyses with the autoregressor are presented in Table 4. In the analyses with
morphological awareness entered last, its contribution increases from less than
1% ( p = .052) in Grade 3 to 3.4% ( p < .01) in Grade 5. When morphological
awareness is entered before phonological awareness, its contribution is greater and
still increases from Grade 3 (1.6%) to Grade 5 (over 5%). Phonological awareness
entered at step 3 clearly reduces the effect of morphological awareness, but it does
not eliminate it. Similarly, morphological awareness entered at step 3 reduces the
effect of phonological awareness, and the latter’s effect is stronger than that of
morphological awareness in Grades 3 and 4 (but not Grade 5).
The results of the second analyses without the autoregressor show that morpho-
logical awareness contributes 9, 10, and 11% of the variance at Grades 3, 4, and 5,

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Table 4. Hierarchical regression analyses predicting pseudoword reading from

intelligence, prior achievement (autoregressor), phonological awareness, and
morphological awareness

Outcome Measure

Grade 3 Grade 4 Grade 5

Pseudoword Pseudoword Pseudoword
Step and Predictor Reading Reading Reading

1. Intelligence .272∗∗∗ .289∗∗∗ .242∗∗∗

2. Grade 2 Pseudoword reading .452∗∗∗ .358∗∗∗ .284∗∗∗
3. Phonological awareness .035∗∗∗ .067∗∗∗ .050∗∗
4. Morphological awareness .007† .024∗∗ .034∗∗
3. Morphological awareness .016∗ .044∗∗∗ .053∗∗
4. Phonological awareness .026∗∗ .047∗∗∗ .030∗∗

Note: Reported values are changes in R 2 .

∗∗∗
p < .001. ∗∗ p < .01. ∗ p < .05. † p < .09.

Table 5. Hierarchical regression analyses predicting single word reading from

intelligence, prior achievement (autoregressor), phonological awareness, and
morphological awareness

Outcome Measure

Grade 3 Grade 4 Grade 5

Single Word Single Word Single Word
Step and Predictor Reading Reading Reading

1. Intelligence .336∗∗∗ .351∗∗∗ .362∗∗∗

2. Grade 2 Single word reading .513∗∗∗ .423∗∗∗ .336∗∗∗
3. Phonological awareness .008∗ .019∗∗ .030∗∗
4. Morphological awareness .003 .008† .004
3. Morphological awareness .005† .013∗ .009†
4. Phonological awareness .006∗ .014∗ .025∗∗

Note: Reported values are changes in R 2 .

∗∗∗
p < .001. ∗∗ p < .01. ∗ p < .05. † p < .08.

respectively (each p < .001), after taking intelligence and phonological awareness
into account. In comparison, phonological awareness contributes 10, 11, and 7%,
respectively (each p < .001), after controlling for intelligence and morphological
awareness.

Single word reading

The regression results for single word reading with the autoregressor are presented
in Table 5. When morphological awareness is entered at step 4, it contributes less

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Table 6. Hierarchical regression analyses predicting reading comprehension from

intelligence, prior achievement (autoregressor), phonological awareness, and
morphological awareness

Outcome Measure

Grade 3 Grade 4 Grade 5

Reading Reading Reading
Step and Predictor Comprehension Comprehension Comprehension

1. Intelligence .345∗∗∗ .373∗∗∗ .360∗∗∗

2. Grade 2 Reading comprehension .350∗∗∗ .216∗∗∗ .195∗∗∗
3. Phonological awareness .017∗ .025∗ .022∗
4. Morphological awareness .004 .031∗∗ .020∗
3. Morphological awareness .007 .040∗∗ .026∗
4. Phonological awareness .014∗ .016∗ .016†

Note: Reported values are changes in R 2 .

∗∗∗
p < .001. ∗∗ p < .01. ∗ p < .05. † p < .06.

than 1% of the variance, only nearing significance ( p < .06) at Grade 4. When
it is entered at step 3, only in Grade 4 is it significant, contributing slightly more
than 1%. In contrast, phonological awareness makes about the same contribution
at Steps 3 and 4, increasing from less than 1% in Grade 3 to 2.5% in Grade 5.
The second analyses, which controlled for intelligence and phonological aware-
ness but not the autoregressor, indicate that morphological awareness contributes
8% ( p < .001), 8% ( p < .01), and 5% ( p < .05) of the variance at Grades 3, 4,
and 5, respectively. In comparison, phonological awareness contributes 8, 8, and
9%, respectively (each p < .001), after intelligence and morphological awareness.

Reading comprehension
The regression results with the autoregressor for reading comprehension are pre-
sented in Table 6. When entered at step 4, the effect of morphological awareness is
nonsignificant at Grade 3 and increases to 2% in Grade 5. It has a slightly greater
effect when entered ahead of phonological awareness. Phonological awareness
contributes between 1 and 2.5% of the variance entered at step 3; this effect is
weaker at step 4, missing the .05 level at Grade 5.
The analyses without the autoregressor indicate that morphological awareness
contributes 8, 10, and 7% (each p < .001) of the variance at Grades 3, 4, and 5,
respectively, after intelligence and phonological awareness. In comparison, phono-
logical awareness contributes 7% ( p < .001), 4% ( p < .01), and 4% ( p < .01),
respectively, after intelligence and morphological awareness.

DISCUSSION
This study investigated the relative independent contributions of morphological
and phonological awareness to improvement in single word reading, pseudoword

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Deacon & Kirby: Morphological and phonological awareness in reading

reading, and reading comprehension. Earlier research suggested that morpholog-

ical awareness makes a significant independent contribution to reading devel-
opment, after controlling for phonological awareness. Further, Carlisle (1995)
indicated that this contribution might be greatest to reading comprehension, and
Singson et al. (2000) argued that the role of morphological awareness might in-
crease over development. The current study offers a test of these three hypotheses
in a longitudinal design that includes controls for verbal and nonverbal intelli-
gence.

Question 1: Does morphological awareness contribute to reading development,

beyond verbal and nonverbal intelligence and phonological awareness?

Morphological awareness made a small, but significant, contribution to reading

development. In every case, the effect of morphological awareness survived con-
trols of phonological awareness and intelligence. In the majority of analyses, it
survived additional controls for the autoregressor, even 3 years after the original
measures were taken. These results provide robust support for the proposal that
morphological awareness has a role in reading development.
The next natural question is: how much of a contribution does morphological
awareness make? In assessing the magnitude of the contribution of morphological
awareness, we can compare its contribution to that of phonological awareness. In
the majority of analyses without the autoregressor, contributions from morpho-
logical awareness are comparable to or greater than those made by phonological
awareness. In the more stringent analyses with the autoregressor, morphological
and phonological awareness made similar contributions, between 1 and 5%, to
Grade 4 and 5 pseudoword reading and reading comprehension. For the other
outcomes, phonological awareness made the stronger contribution, in the range of
1–3%. In other words, morphological awareness performs comparably to phono-
logical awareness.
It is important to remember, however, that in the autoregressor models both
intelligence and prior achievement have been controlled. Controls for both verbal
and nonverbal intelligence were warranted, given the low correlations between the
two measures and their significant contributions to the regression equations. Both
morphological and phonological awareness had ample opportunity to contribute
to prior development of reading skills. In the analyses without autoregressors,
both phonological and morphological awareness contributed between 4 and 11%
to each outcome. The effects of the autoregressors were quite strong, adding an
additional 20–51% of the variance (see Tables 4–6). Thus, by the time the lin-
guistic awareness measures were entered into the regression equations, between
53 and 85% of the variance had been accounted for. Further, there is a substantial
correlation between the measures of morphological and phonological awareness
(see Table 1). Therefore, the estimates provided in the autoregressor analyses are
extremely conservative, measuring only the independent contributions of the two
linguistic awareness variables to the change in reading skills since Grade 2. Given
the relatively small amount of variance remaining, the two linguistic awareness
measures performed reasonably well.

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Deacon & Kirby: Morphological and phonological awareness in reading

Question 2: Does morphological awareness make a greater contribution to reading

comprehension than to single word and pseudoword reading?
In the autoregressor analyses, morphological awareness made a greater contri-
bution to reading comprehension than to single word reading. A similar pattern
emerged in the analyses without the autoregressors for the Grade 4 and 5 data. This
suggests that morphological awareness has a greater role in building meaning from
text than in the reading of individual words. However, morphological awareness
contributed similarly to pseudoword reading as to reading comprehension, in the
analyses both with and without the autoregressors. These results cast doubt upon
any suggestion that the effect of morphological awareness is greater at the text
than at the single word levels.
The finding of a role of morphological awareness in pseudoword reading may
seem surprising. Pseudoword items are not typically viewed as having morphemic
structure. These results call into question this assumption. Children may be pro-
cessing pseudowords, such as gaked and mancingful (both items in Word Attack),
with an eye to morphemic units. The current study cannot test this hypothesis; one
could do so by presenting pseudowords as mono- and multimorphemic items.
Further, the effect for pseudowords but not for real words is unusual given the
results of previous research. Single word reading had the highest autoregressor ef-
fects in this study, leaving the least variance for the awareness variables to predict;
thus, morphological awareness cannot be ruled out as an earlier contributor. This
is consistent with the high correlations between morphological awareness and all
aspects of reading, shown in Table 1. Further, in the analyses without autoregres-
sors, it contributed between 5 and 8%. We propose that morphological awareness
does not contribute more to reading comprehension than to word reading; instead,
its impact can be witnessed in the processing of many types of text.
Question 3: Does the contribution of morphological awareness increase over reading
development?
There is some indication that the role of morphological awareness in pseudoword
reading and reading comprehension increases over time. In the autoregressor anal-
yses, the contributions rose from a nonsignificant 0.7 to 3% for pseudoword reading
and from a nonsignificant 0.4 to 2% for reading comprehension. Notably, the con-
tribution of morphological awareness increased in step with that of phonological
awareness. The apparent increase in effects over time may be due to a decrease in
the ability of the controlled variables to account for variance further away in time,
thus leaving more variance to be predicted by other factors. This interpretation is
consistent with the stable or slightly decreasing correlations seen in Table 1 and the
relatively stable contributions in the analyses without autoregressors. In general,
these results suggest that children continue to bring a host of skills, including those
based on phonology and morphology, to the reading task.

CONCLUSIONS AND FURTHER RESEARCH

Our results provide robust evidence for a role for morphological awareness be-
yond that of phonological awareness in the achievement of reading expertise.

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Deacon & Kirby: Morphological and phonological awareness in reading

Morphological awareness made a significant contribution to reading development,

even 3 years after the original measures were taken, and this relationship survived
controls of phonological awareness and verbal and nonverbal intelligence. Fur-
thermore, these results demonstrate that morphological awareness is not restricted
in its impact on reading; it influences many areas of reading. These results indicate
that morphological awareness is not just more phonological. It makes a contribu-
tion above and beyond phonological awareness, as well as several other control
variables.
This conclusion is based on standardized tests with a range of single- and multi-
morphemic words, which offer broad, but not deep, information about reading. It
would be valuable to investigate systematically the role of morphological aware-
ness in the reading of one- and two-morpheme words, such as notion and action, as
in research on spelling development (Bryant, Deacon, & Nunes, in press; Deacon &
Bryant, 2004). Similarly, the use of morphological information in comprehension
could be evaluated, as examined in vocabulary development by Anglin (1993).
Inquiry into the effects of morphological awareness on other measures of read-
ing, both at younger and older ages, would permit a deeper view into reading
development.
While both the phonological and morphological awareness measures had good
reliability, a further consideration lies in task choice. Our morphological awareness
measure, which was successfully used in spelling research (Nunes et al., 1997a,
1997b), concentrated solely on the past tense. The current research illustrates
its usefulness in predicting reading development. A task with a broad range of
inflections and derivations might account for even more variance. This is, in part,
because the texts that children in upper elementary school encounter are rife with
derived forms (Nagy & Anderson, 1984). Further, there is substantial develop-
ment in children’s knowledge of derivational morphology during this time period
(Carlisle, 1988; Tyler & Nagy, 1989). Task format also needs to be considered.
The morphological task may have, in part, measured analogical reasoning ability,
in addition to morphological awareness. Further, there may be overlap between the
reading comprehension and analogical tasks because both ask for missing words
to be supplied. Similarly, the oddity task may tap memory abilities, in addition
to phonology. The impact of spurious variables, such as any similarities between
measures, can be limited by adding general abilities control measures, as we did
in this study. Another way to address this is to use multiple measures of the
same ability (e.g., Carlisle, 2000). Such methodological innovations will allow a
more in-depth appreciation of the contributions of morphological and phonological
awareness.
In conclusion, these findings add to the body of evidence that morphological
awareness is more than just “more phonological.” Morphological awareness has a
role, beyond that of phonological awareness, in reading development. These results
speak to the importance of teaching that is directed at building both of these skills.
This is supported by the results of pilot research by Elbro and Arnbak (1996), which
suggest that morphological awareness training can improve reading in dyslexic
students. Encouraging the appreciation of both the phonological and morphological
connections represented in written language will help to build a broad set of skills
that the child can bring to the reading task.

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Deacon & Kirby: Morphological and phonological awareness in reading

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We thank the children and teachers who helped with this research over the course of many
years. We also acknowledge grants from The Queen’s College and The Rhodes Trust of
Oxford to the first author and from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council
of Canada to the second author, which supported the preparation of this article. Finally,
we thank Laurie Fais, Usha Goswami, Rauno Parrila, Noshin Samji, and three anonymous
reviewers who gave us helpful suggestions on earlier drafts of this manuscript.

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