Morphological Awareness Performance Profiles of First- Through Sixth-Grade Students

Abstract

Purpose: We examined whether diverse profiles of strengths and weaknesses would emerge when assessing different aspects of morphological awareness in first- through sixth-grade students using a recently developed standardized test, the Morphological Awareness Test for Reading and Spelling (MATRS; Apel et al., 2021). Method: Four thousand fifty-nine first- through sixth-grade students completed the eight morphological awareness tasks of the MATRS. The eight tasks represent the multiple ways that morphological awareness impacts both spoken and written language skills for the English language. Exploratory finite mixture models estimated the number of latent subgroups that best reflected heterogeneity in task-level performance by grade level. Specific profiles were chosen that demonstrated strong reliability and included a set of tasks that were consistent between first- and second-grade students and between third- and sixth-grade students. Results: Different performance profiles emerged when the students completed multiple morphological awareness tasks. At each of the six grades (first through sixth), clusters of students performed differentially on specific tasks. Conclusions: The findings demonstrate that students can differ in patterns of strength and weaknesses of their morphological awareness given a range of tasks that assess different aspects of morphological awareness. The clinical implications of these findings suggest that by identifying students struggling in specific areas of morphological awareness, clinicians can develop and implement specific prescriptive instructional plans.