The association between morphological awareness and reading comprehension in children : A systematic review and meta-analysis

Liu, Yazhi and Groen, Margriet and Cain, Kate (2024) The association between morphological awareness and reading comprehension in children : A systematic review and meta-analysis. Educational Research Review, 42: 100571. ISSN 1747-938X

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Text (MA_Metaanalysis_FINAL) - Accepted Version
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Abstract

This systematic review and meta-analysis examined the association between morphological awareness and reading comprehension, taking into account critical factors that could affect its strength. Following NIRO guidelines, we included 44 studies involving 63 independent samples, and 126 correlations between morphological awareness and reading comprehension. Overall, we found a significant association between morphological awareness and reading comprehension (r = .565), but also large heterogeneity (81.37%), supporting the need for analysis of potential moderators: age, type of morphologically complex word, characteristics of morphological awareness and reading comprehension tests were examined. We found that type of morphologically complex word was the only significant moderator of this association. In sum, we have demonstrated that morphological awareness influences reading comprehension across a wide age range. Implications for educational practice, as well as recommendations that future studies report more detailed information about participants and measures, are discussed.