Assessment of Textual Morphological Awareness: An Application of Item Response Theory Multidimensional Analysis

• In Event: Marriott Roundtable Session 70
  In Roundtable Session: Cognition and Assessment SIG Roundtable 2

Abstract

Relative to other cognitive skills involved in visual word recognition, there are few morphological awareness assessment tools. The existing measures have several limitations; they largely neglect the textual modality, compound words, and identification of morphemes. This research aims to validate an assessment of morphological awareness for students for whom this may be an emerging skill as well as those who have fully developed awareness using real words presented in a written modality and inclusive of all morphologically complex word types: compound, inflectional, and derivational. Results suggest that the three-dimensional model fits the data to a better degree than the one- or two-dimensional models, indicating that the assessment measures individual’s ability to process compound, inflectional, and derivational aspects of morphological knowledge.

Author

• Robin Irey, University of California at Berkeley