Language acquisition and disorders

Spelling and Morphology

Developmental perspective (Estelle Ardanouy, Dr. Hélène Delage & Pr. Pascal Zesiger)

Initially, we aim to highlight the role of derivational morphology in the acquisition of written language and, more specifically, spelling. We aim to verify whether morphological awareness in 3P and 4P (the manipulation of morphemes, the smallest units carrying meaning) predicts spelling skills a year later.

Next, we seek to establish the weight of morphological strategy among other skills (phonological, graphotactic, specific) as a function of children's class, throughout primary school (from 3P to 7P).

Having established the value of derivational morphology, we implemented specific, explicit and intensive training in derivational morphology with children at the start of 6P. We also applied this training to children with dyslexia between the ages of 9 and 14.

Finally, the literature highlights the value of using derivational morphology with mainstream children for implicit learning of word spelling. However, we know little about this in children with dyslexia. That's why we're exploring this avenue.

In adulthood (Estelle Ardanouy, Dr. Hélène Delage & Pr. Pascal Zesiger)

Research (Cavalli et al., 2017, Martin et al., 2010) has shown the compensatory nature of derivational morphology in university-educated adults with dyslexia, as opposed to phonological skills, which remain severely impaired. In the same vein as these studies, we seek to refine these results and test this hypothesis by dissociating university and non-university adults with dyslexia, adding a measure of graphotactic regularities to the morphological and phonological dimensions.

 

We are still looking for participants with dyslexia who have not completed a university course. If you are interested, please contact estelle.ardanouy(at)unige.ch.

We are also conducting an explicit, specific and intensive training study with university-educated adults, with the aim of improving their spelling skills, as this is a vector for academic, professional and social success.

We are still looking for participants with a university background and dyslexia. If you are interested, please contact estelle.ardanouy(at)unige.ch.