Processamento morfológico e leitura no português brasileiro: um estudo longitudinal

Abstract

The present thesis investigated the relationship between morphology and reading in Brazilian Portuguese. A longitudinal design was employed and 220 children in grades 2 to 5 of elementary school were evaluated in their respective school year (Time 1) and one year later (Time 2). Two articles were produced. The first aimed to aimed to evaluate the relationship between morphological awareness and reading. Hierarchical regression analyzes were performed, controlling intelligence, phonological awareness and working memory, as well as cross-lagged correlation analyzes. The results of both analyzes converged to show the contributions of reading to morphological awareness in the 2nd and 3rd grade and the contributions of morphological awareness for reading in the 4th and 5th grade. In study 2, a lexical decision task with priming technique (SOA of 60 and 250ms) was performed to evaluate the effect of morphological priming during development and its relation with morphological awareness. The reaction time of pairs of words (Prime and target) with morphological, orthographic or unrelated relation was compared. There was a morphological priming effect from the 3rd grade on the SOA of 250 ms and from the 4th grade on the short duration SOA. Morphological awareness did not correlate with morphological priming. The results of both studies point to the importance of the morphological components of words for reading ability, highlighting the pedagogical relevance of the explicit teaching of morphology during the literacy phase.