Phonological and Morphological Processing in Adult Students with Learning/Reading Disabilities

Abstract

A target group of college students with learning/ reading disabilities was compared with reading-level (RA) and chronological-age (CA) contrast groups on several phonological and morphological computerized information-processing tasks. Results confirm the importance of accurate and rapid processing of simple lexical items to the automatic level. The target students were less accurate and took longer reaction time, as compared with their CA controls, though not with the RA contrast group, in deciding if pseudohomophonics sounded like real words and if pairs of words with different rime conditions rhymed. The target students showed both quantitative and qualitative differences in processing morphological words and morphographic letter strings, in contrast to some earlier findings. The integration of phonological and morphological knowledge is emphasized in working with adult college students with learning/ reading disabilities.