KNOWLEDGE OF SUFFIXED WORDS - A COMPARISON OF READING-DISABLED AND NONDISABLED READERS

The present study was undertaken to measure and compare reading disabl ed and nondisabled readers' semantic and syntactic knowledge about der ivational suffixes as a function of modality (reading versus listening ) and as a function of the ''neutrality'' of the derivative (neutral v ersus nonneutral). In the present study, neutrality refers to how stra ightforward and productive is the relationship between the root and de rived form, with ''completeness'' qualifying as a neutral derivative a nd ''completion'' a nonneutral derivative. Two experimental tests were designed for the study. The Semantics test measured ability to extrac t lexical-semantic information from suffixed words, and the Syntax tes t measured knowledge regarding the part-of-speech contribution of deri vational suffixes. br each test the target words were divided equally between neutral and nonneutral derivatives and between items that were either read or listened to. Participants included 20 sixth-grade read ing disabled students (6RD), 20 fourth-grade normal readers (4N), and 20 sixth-grade normal readers (6N). In both the Semantics test and the Syntax test all groups scored better on neutral than on nonneutral de rivatives while listening and reading, and the XD students were no mor e affected by neutrality than the nondisabled readers. In the Semantic s test all groups scored better in listening than in reading, but the XD group showed the greatest oral-reading difference. The XD group als o scored better in listening than reading in the Syntax test (real wor ds), whereas the two nondisabled groups scored better in reading than in listening. Thus, the RD students were better able to demonstrate th eir knowledge of suffixed words in oral language measures than in read ing measures.