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Originales Revista de Logopedia, Foniatría y Audiología

2009, Vol. 29, No. 2, 97-103


Copyright 2009 AELFA y
Grupo Ars XXI de Comunicación, S.L.
ISSN: 0214-4603

Cristina Burani Reading fluency and morpho-lexical


processing: developmental
studies in Italian
Institute for Cognitive Sciences and
Technologies (ISTC-CNR)
Rome (Italy)

Abstract Learning to read in transparent orthographies


It has been suggested that readers of transparent
orthographies rely on small-size reading units, such Learning to read a regular transparent orthogra-
as graphemes and phonemes, in learning to read. The phy such as Italian or Spanish is much easier than
present paper shows that lexical and morpho-lexical learning to read an irregular opaque orthography
reading is used by developing readers of Italian since such as English. In transparent orthographies, chil-
the first elementary grades. Several studies that dren achieve high levels of accuracy after a few
report the presence of lexical and morpho-lexical months of teaching, whereas children learning to
effects in Italian developmental dyslexics are also read an irregular orthography achieve good reading
reviewed. It is argued that large-size reading units accuracy much later (Seymour, Aro and Erskine,
such as morphemes and whole-words are necessary, 2003). In transparent orthographies, most letters are
even in a transparent orthography, in order to attain assigned the same pronunciation irrespective of the
reading fluency. surrounding letter context. Thus, a good level of pro-
Key words: Transparent orthography, reading acquisition, word morphology, Ita- nunciation accuracy is easily obtained by translating
lian developmental dyslexia.
each single letter into its corresponding phoneme.
This characteristic is argued to mean that children
Fluidez en la lectura y procesamiento learning to read transparent orthographies rely to a
morfolexical: estudios de desarrollo en Italia great extent on small linguistic units (single letters
and phonemes), even when larger reading units are
Se ha sugerido que, al aprender a leer, los lectores available to them (Goswami, Ziegler, Dalton and
de ortografías transparentes se basan en unidades Schneider, 2003). In contrast, in opaque orthogra-
de lectura de reducido tamaño, como grafemas y
phies, the use of large grain size units is necessary to
fonemas. El presente artículo muestra que los lec-
resolve the inconsistencies in grapheme-to-phoneme
tores en desarrollo en Italia utilizan la lectura lexi-
cal y morfolexical desde los primeros grados ele- conversion (GPC), i.e., to obtain good accuracy in
mentales. Asimismo, se revisan varios estudios pronunciation. This means that beginning readers of
que documentan la presencia de efectos lexicales y an opaque orthography would be forced towards the
morfolexicales en disléxicos evolutivos italianos. use of units at a larger grain size, such as multiletter
Se sostiene que, incluso en ortografías transpa- graphemes and word endings, or whole-word units
rentes, las unidades de lectura de amplio tamaño, (Ziegler and Goswami, 2005; 2006).
como morfemas y palabras completas, son necesa- In transparent scripts, units larger than single let-
rias para adquirir fluidez en la lectura. ter-phoneme units are seldom necessary to attain
accurate pronunciation. However, the acquisition of
Palabras clave: Ortografía transparente, adquisición de la lectura, morfolo-
gía de la palabra, dislexia del desarrollo en italianos. recoding accuracy is only a small part of becoming a
mature skilled reader. In a transparent orthography,
Correspondence: Via S.Martino della Battaglia 44 larger reading units are necessary to become a fast
Cristina Burani 00185 Roma and fluent reader (Wimmer, 2006). In recent years, it
Istituto di Scienze e Tecnologie della Italy
Cognizione, CNR E-mail: cristina.burani@istc.cnr.it has become apparent that units larger than grapheme
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CRISTINA BURANI READING FLUENCY AND MORPHO-LEXICAL PROCESSING: DEVELOPMENTAL STUDIES IN ITALIAN

reading units, for instance, whole-word representa- iar words. These authors found that the presence of
tions, are used by adult readers of Italian, a transpar- the letters c and g in a word, that is, the presence of
ent orthography, to speed up lexical access and read- complex context-sensitive rules, slows down reading
ing aloud (Arduino and Burani, 2004; Burani, Arduino aloud in adult proficient readers compared to when
and Barca, 2007; Colombo, Pasini and Balota, 2006; the adults are asked to read words that contain sim-
Pagliuca, Arduino, Barca and Burani, 2008; Paulesu, ple (non-contextual) GPC rules. However, this effect
2006). Increasing evidence shows that lexical reading (the rule contextuality effect) is limited to words
develops early in readers of a transparent orthography with low print frequency. Burani, et al. (2006) found
(Marcolini, Burani and Colombo, 2009), and is avail- that high-frequency words did not show any effect
able to readers with developmental reading difficulties of rule-contextuality.
(Paizi, Zoccolotti and Burani, in press). Moreover, it has These observations are inconsistent with the
been found that mature readers can use the lexical assumption of exclusive reliance on small linguistic
morphemic constituents of a word (roots and affixes) units, but in accordance with the view that reading
to speed up lexical access and comprehension (Burani units larger than single graphemes are used by
and Thornton, 2003; Schreuder and Baayen, 1995). mature readers. Within the dual-route computational
Knowledge of morphemes develops early and is widely framework for reading (Coltheart, Rastle, Perry, Lang-
used by children in word comprehension and produc- don and Ziegler, 2001), the rule contextuality effect is
tion tasks (see, e.g., Bertram, Laine and Virkkala, 2000). indicative of the contribution of the nonlexical serial
However, it is still debated whether access to mor- route in reading low-, but not high-frequency words.
phemic units (roots and affixes) is useful for improving High-frequency words are more likely to be processed
reading fluency and whether morphemes are available as whole reading units because they are processed
to developing readers with differing reading abilities. relatively more quickly through direct access to lexi-
In the next sections, we review recent studies show- cal representations. Thus, reading times of high-fre-
ing that lexical and morphemic reading units are used quency words should not be affected by the pres-
by young Italian readers. Similarities and differences ence of contextual graphemes. In contrast, the rule
between adult and young (skilled and dyslexic) readers contextuality effect is expected for low-frequency
will also be discussed. words because low-frequency words are more likely
than high-frequency words to be processed nonlexi-
cally, in an analytical serial manner.
Rule contextuality and lexical reading The restriction of the rule contextuality effect to
low-frequency word reading has been confirmed,
In the great majority of cases, an Italian also, for young skilled readers. Barca, Ellis and Burani
grapheme consists of a single letter that is pro- (2007) studied seven and nine year old students,
nounced in the same way in any letter context. How- obtaining results that were remarkably similar to
ever, Italian grapheme-to-phoneme correspondences those obtained for adult proficient readers. Words
are not always simple. The pronunciation of the let- that included letters requiring pronunciation by con-
Rev Logop Fon Audiol 2009, Vol. 29, No. 2, 97-103

ters c and g depends on the following letter(s). Thus textual rules were read more slowly and less accu-
the rules required for the pronunciation of these rately than words that did not. However, the rule
ambiguous letters are context-dependent and as contextuality effect was significant for childrens’
such are more complex than those required for let- reading speed and accuracy for low- but not for
ters that have only one possible pronunciation, being high-frequency words. Rule contextuality effects
independent of context. If reading aloud in Italian appeared to be identical in both adult and young
were strictly based on small reading units, ie irre- proficient readers. The similarity between the effects
spective of frequency, all words containing complex obtained for adult and young skilled readers demon-
(context-sensitive) letter-sound correspondences strates that young readers of transparent ortho-
would require longer processing times than words graphies employ reading units corresponding to
only comprising context-independent GPC rules. whole-words, where words have been experienced
Burani, Barca and Ellis (2006) showed that the pres- frequently, and develop a reading system as efficient
ence of letters with contextually conditioned pro- as adult proficient readers starting from the first ele-
nunciation matters but only when reading unfamil- mentary grades.
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CRISTINA BURANI READING FLUENCY AND MORPHO-LEXICAL PROCESSING: DEVELOPMENTAL STUDIES IN ITALIAN

Barca, Burani, DiFilippo and Zoccolotti (2006) and dyslexic Italian readers rely on morphemes (roots
extended the study of the effects of word frequency and affixes) as meaningful reading units of an inter-
and rule contextuality to the reading performance of mediate size between single graphemes and words.
sixth grade developmental dyslexics. It has been Italian adult proficient readers read aloud non-
claimed that Italian dyslexics show a deficit of one or words that include morphemes more successfully
more components of the lexical route, and that the than nonwords that do not (Burani, Arduino and
effects of such deficits are ameliorated through a Marcolini, 2006; see also Burani and Laudanna, 2003,
heavy reliance on the grapheme-to-phoneme con- for a review). Morpheme-based lexical reading has
version system of the nonlexical reading procedure been demonstrated to be available from the first ele-
(Spinelli, De Luca, Di Filippo, Mancini, Martelli and mentary school grades, in both reading aloud and lex-
Zoccolotti, 2005; Zoccolotti, De Luca, Di Pace, Judica, ical decision tasks (Burani, Marcolini and Stella, 2002).
Orlandi and Spinelli, 1999; Zoccolotti, De Luca, Di Burani, et al. (2002) found that novel, non-existent
Pace, Gasperini, Judica and Spinelli, 2005). If dyslexic combinations (nonwords, e.g., DONNISTA, ‘womanist’)
readers rely too much on nonlexical decoding, they made up of a familiar root (e.g., DONN-, ‘woman’) and
should exhibit rule contextuality effects irrespective a derivational suffix (e.g., –IST, ‘-ist’) resulting in non-
of word frequency. Typically developing readers, in existent combinations, ie morphological nonwords,
contrast, would be expected to show rule contextu- were read aloud faster and more accurately than
ality effects only for low-frequency words, similar to nonwords that contained neither roots nor suffixes
adult readers. The results for dyslexics were not in (e.g., DENNOSTO) (simple nonwords) by both adult
accordance with the prediction. Words containing and young proficient readers. In a lexical decision
complex, context sensitive rules were read more task, in which participants must decide whether a
slowly and less accurately than words that contained visually presented letter string corresponds to a word
simple rules. However, similarly to previous findings or not, both adult and young readers incorrectly
for (adult and young) proficient readers, the rule recognised morphological nonwords as possible
contextuality effect was limited to low-frequency words more often than simple nonwords. The results
words for both developmental dyslexic and typically provided evidence overall that morphemes are known
developing age-matched readers. Dyslexic readers by young Italian readers and that morpholexical read-
showed a generally inferior reading performance ing develops quite early in Italian.
compared to the controls but both groups were sim- The finding that the presence of morphemes in
ilarly affected by word frequency and rule contex- nonwords facilitated the reading performance of
tuality effects. These findings indicate that dyslexics young Italian readers, similar to proficient adult
do employ lexical reading for high frequency words, readers, led us to investigate whether less skilled
like their proficient peers. If dyslexics employed a readers, and specifically developmental dyslexics, can
nonlexical reading strategy for all stimuli, the rule also benefit from the presence of morphemes. Mor-
contextuality effect would have been present for phemes may be efficient reading units for dyslexics
both high- and low-frequency words. The effect of because they are larger units than graphemes - ana- Rev Logop Fon Audiol 2009, Vol. 29, No. 2, 97-103

word frequency (see also Paizi, De Luca, Zoccolotti lytical grapheme-by-grapheme reading would be
and Burani, under review), and the limitation of the extremely slow - but smaller than words - dyslexics
rule contextuality effect to low-frequency words for have difficulty processing words as wholes. The dif-
dyslexic and skilled readers, provide evidence that ficulty of dyslexics in whole-stimulus processing has
lexical reading units are available to Italian develop- been reported by means of eye movement studies,
mental dyslexics just as they are to proficient readers. in which dyslexic readers showed a high number of
fixations with a prevalence of small amplitude sac-
cades and extremely fractionated text scanning (De
The development of morpho-lexical reading Luca, Borrelli, Judica, Spinelli and Zoccolotti, 2002).
On the basis of the latter observations, the hypothe-
Most Italian words are morphologically complex, sis could be made that morphemic constituents
i.e., they are formed by a root and an affix (either (roots and suffixes) may help dyslexics to read aloud
inflectional or derivational). Despite the transparency both pseudowords and words. Similar benefits due to
of the script, several studies indicate that both skilled morpheme-based reading aloud of words may be
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CRISTINA BURANI READING FLUENCY AND MORPHO-LEXICAL PROCESSING: DEVELOPMENTAL STUDIES IN ITALIAN

present in younger readers, but may not occur for tically, so morphemic parsing is neither necessary nor
skilled readers due to their ability to process larger advantageous. Indeed, when whole-word processing
reading units as a whole. is available, morphemic parsing can have costs, more
Burani, Marcolini, De Luca and Zoccolotti (2008) than benefits (see, e.g., Laine, Vainio and Hyönä,
addressed the role of word morphology in Italian 1999; Traficante and Burani, 2003). For unskilled
dyslexic readers, investigating reading aloud of mor- readers, on the other hand, the presence of mor-
phologically complex nonwords and words in dyslex- phemic constituents proved beneficial for both non-
ics, in reading skill-matched and in chronologically word and word reading.
age-matched typically developing readers, and in The reason why, in contrast to skilled readers,
proficient adult readers. The first experiment focused reading based on familiar morphemes (roots and
on the effect of morphological constituents on read- affixes) can be efficient for dyslexic and younger
ing aloud morphologically complex nonwords (e.g., developing readers in processing different types of
DONNISTA, ‘womanist’) compared to simple non- linguistic stimuli, including words, resides in the fact
words that did not contain morphemes (e.g., DEN- that, for unskilled readers, most words may not (yet)
NOSTO). All four groups of readers read morphologi- be in their orthographic lexicon, or may be too long
cally complex nonwords composed of roots and to be processed as a whole. The presence of mor-
suffixes faster and more accurately than simple non- phemes may thus facilitate reading for low fre-
words. The results confirmed previous findings for quency words, especially longer ones, that may
skilled readers (Burani, et al., 2002) and indicated require serial processing because of their length (see
that dyslexic readers are sensitive to morphemes in also Bertram and Hyönä, 2003) or because of their
nonword reading aloud. absence from the lexicon. It is noteworthy that, even
Within the dual-route framework of reading though dyslexic and younger readers may not yet
aloud, familiar words are processed in a holistic fash- have fully mastered whole word processing, they can
ion by directly accessing their representations in the rely on smaller units, i.e. morphemes, to enhance
lexicon (Coltheart, et al., 2001). Consequently, in the their reading performance.
case of known words, morphemic constituents In conclusion, Italian dyslexics’ reading can be
should not affect the performance of skilled readers. based on grain size units larger than single letters,
However, as previous data indicate that whole word contrary to assumptions of reliance on small grain
processing may be challenging for Italian dyslexic size units for readers of transparent orthographies
children, the presence of morphemic constituents in (Ziegler and Goswami, 2005; 2006). These findings
words might be more beneficial for developmental are in line with results obtained on deeper orthogra-
dyslexics than for skilled readers. phies. For both English and Danish, only younger and
The effect of morphemic constituents in reading dyslexic readers showed faster reading times of
aloud words was assessed by Burani, et al. (2008) in derived than monomorphemic words, whereas read-
a second experiment using the same participant ing speed did not differ according to word type for
groups. Two sets of words (derived vs. simple) were older skilled children (Carlisle and Stone, 2005; Elbrö
Rev Logop Fon Audiol 2009, Vol. 29, No. 2, 97-103

employed. Derived words contained a familiar root and Arnbak, 1996).


and a frequent derivational suffix (e.g., CASS-IERE,
‘cashier’). In contrast, simple words could not be
parsed as root + derivational suffix (e.g., CAMMELLO, A morphology-based compensatory reading
‘camel’). The results showed that morphological strategy for dyslexic readers?
structure did not affect word reading of proficient,
young and adult readers, but was advantageous for Morpheme processing has been considered to be
both dyslexic and younger reading skill-matched a compensatory reading strategy in word decoding
children. Overall, these results illustrate that, in the and comprehension in dyslexia (Colé, Leuwers and
absence of whole-word lexical representations, all Sprenger-Charolles, 2005; Elbrö and Arnbak, 1996).
readers, including proficient readers, took advantage This morphology-based reading strategy in dyslexics
of morphological structure in reading aloud non- is assumed to be semantic, because it may involve
words. The same advantage was not found for skilled meaning extraction from the morphemic units
readers in reading words that can be processed holis- (stems and affixes) constituting the word. For
100 34
CRISTINA BURANI READING FLUENCY AND MORPHO-LEXICAL PROCESSING: DEVELOPMENTAL STUDIES IN ITALIAN

instance, Elbrö and Arnbak (1996) found that Dan- Barca, 2007). Second, in previous studies on visual
ish adolescent dyslexics read words with a semanti- processing of morphologically complex new words
cally transparent morphological structure (e.g., SUN- (or pseudowords), it was shown that both in adult
BURN) better than words with an opaque structure and child Italian skilled readers the degree of seman-
(e.g., WINDOW), an advantage not found for the tic interpretability of the new root-suffix combina-
control group. tion (e.g., DONNISTA, ‘womanist’, interpretable as
Morphemes indeed help to obtain the meaning of ‘somebody who likes or supports women’) did affect
a morphologically complex word in comprehension lexical decision but had no impact on reading aloud
tasks. Burani, Bimonte, Barca and Vicari (2006) stud- (Burani, Dovetto, Spuntarelli and Thornton, 1999;
ied how the use of word morphology facilitates the Burani, et al., 2002).
understanding of new words both in typically devel- In the latter studies, the pseudowords were sub-
oping fourth graders and in individuals with Williams mitted to ratings of semantic interpretability on a
syndrome, a genetically based neurodevelopmental seven-point scale. Then the mean interpretability
disorder associated with mild to severe mental retar- ratings (ranging from 2.95 to 5.07) were used as pre-
dation, with verbal skills usually better preserved dictors in post-hoc correlations with mean reaction
than nonverbal skills (see Martens, Wilson, & Reuters, times and error rates in naming and lexical decision
2008, for a review). By employing a word definition as criteria, for both children and adults. The degree
task, derived unfamiliar suffixed words (e.g., COL- of semantic interpretability of the new morphologi-
ORISTA, ‘colorist’) were compared to simple unfamil- cal combination negatively affected lexical decisions
iar words (e.g., FARABUTTO, ‘rascal’). If word mor- with highly interpretable morphological pseudo-
phology plays a role in word comprehension, derived words being harder to be rejected as nonwords rela-
words should be better defined than matched tive to less interpretable morphological pseudo-
simple words, because the meaning of a derived words. However, interpretability did not affect
unfamiliar word can be drawn by analyzing and naming performance, neither for children in any
combining the meanings of the two morphemic con- grade nor for adults (similar results were reported in
stituents (root and affix). In contrast, the meaning of the case of Dutch new compounds by Coolen, van
a simple word, when it is encountered for the first Jaarsveld and Schreuder, 1991).
time out of context, cannot be inferred. The results Burani, et al. (1999) argued that the activation of
showed that derived words were better defined than lexical morphemic representations, which results in
simple words by both typically developing children faster and more accurate naming of newly encoun-
and mental age-matched individuals with Williams tered morphemic combinations, does not necessarily
syndrome, and that both groups were positively imply that the semantics of the new combination is
affected by the frequency and productivity of the activated as well. Whereas the meaning of a new
suffixes. The more productive and frequent a suffix morphological combination is processed and has a
is, the easier it is to understand a derived word (see main role in judging its acceptability as a possible
also Bertram, et al., 2000, for similar results in Finnish word, or in comprehending its meaning, it does not Rev Logop Fon Audiol 2009, Vol. 29, No. 2, 97-103

children). Thus Burani, et al. (2006) demonstrated, in seem to play a role in the process of reading aloud.
developing readers of different cognitive and linguis- These results add evidence in favor of the hypothesis
tic abilities, early access to morphology and early that morpheme-based reading does not necessarily
employment of root and suffix knowledge to under- imply parallel access to a semantic component, by
stand the meaning of non familiar words. which the meaning of the combination is activated,
If one considers only the results obtained in our even in children (for the view that lexical reading is
reading aloud studies, it cannot be judged whether not necessarily mediated by semantic activation, see
the reading advantage shown by dyslexic and also Peressotti and Job, 2002). The possible impact of
younger readers with morphologically complex the semantic characteristics of morphologically com-
words is due to accessing meaningful units (mor- plex stimuli on the reading performance of Italian
phemes). However, two observations can be made. dyslexics has not yet been assessed. Nevertheless, our
First, speeded naming in a transparent orthography is studies suggest that morphemic units are necessary
usually not affected by semantic variables such as for dyslexic readers of transparent orthographies to
word imageability (see, e.g., Burani, Arduino and increase reading fluency.
35 101
CRISTINA BURANI READING FLUENCY AND MORPHO-LEXICAL PROCESSING: DEVELOPMENTAL STUDIES IN ITALIAN

Conclusions orthography. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 33, 75-


95.
Barca, L., Burani, C., Di Filippo, G. and Zoccolotti, P. (2006).
Recent theroretical accounts have suggested that, Italian developmental dyslexic and proficient readers:
during reading acquisition, readers of transparent Where are the differences? Brain and Language, 98, 347-
scripts rely on small grain size reading units, specifi- 51.
Barca, L., Ellis, A.W. and Burani, C. (2007). Context-sensitive
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deeper scripts like English, for whom multiple grain Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 20, 495-509.
size mappings are necessary because of the inconsis- Bertram, R. and Hyönä, J. (2003). The length of a complex word
tencies of the script (Goswami, et al., 2003; Ziegler and modifies the role of morphological structure: Evidence
from eye movements when reading short and long Finnish
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