Reading processing in acquisition of derivational morphology in Brazilian Portuguese (BP) by children with dyslexia

Abstract

This study investigates the acquisition of derivational morphology in Brazilian Portuguese (BP) by children with preliminary dyslexia diagnosis. Many studies have pointed out that dyslexic people have difficult in processing morphologically complex words (CAPLAN, 1998), thus suggesting a possible disorder concerning the way derived words are processed and stored in the mental lexicon. Another possible explanation could be that dyslexic people show many problems during the word graphical form recognition and in the relationship between the graphical form and its corresponding phonetical one. In both of these cases, this difficult is reflected on the reading competence as well as on the acquisition of rules underlying the derivational processes of word formation in BP. In order to gain more evidences about this question, an experimental task was conducted, using the Morphosemantical Decision Paradigm (BESSE; VIDIGAL DE PAULA; GOMBERT, 2005), which represents an adaptation of the experimental task used by Mota (2008). It were tested 25 non-dyslexic children divided in 2 aged groups, thus forming two control groups; and 10 children with preliminary dyslexia diagnosis, divided in two aged groups. Results suggest that dyslexic children acquiring BP have showed more difficult to read and to process morphologically complex words compared with nondyslexic children who are still acquiring this language.