Syntactic Awareness Skills in Children with Dyslexia: The Contributions of Phonological Awareness and Morphological Awareness

Abstract

Research has shown that children with dyslexia have syntactic awareness difficulties in comparison to typically developing readers. Considering the theoretical connections among phonological awareness, morphological awareness, and syntactic awareness, the present study explored (a) whether Greek-speaking children with dyslexia face syntactic awareness difficulties in comparison to typically developing readers, and (b) to what extent phonological and non-phonological language skills contribute to syntactic awareness performance. Measures of syntactic awareness, phonological awareness, morphological awareness, and receptive vocabulary were administered among 8.7-year-old children with and without dyslexia. The children with dyslexia had syntactic awareness difficulties in comparison to the typically developing readers. Phonological awareness, morphological awareness, and reading status were significant predictors of syntactic awareness performance. Phonological and morphological awareness made a more substantial contribution to syntactic awareness performance in the typically developing readers. Notably, reading status (i.e., children with dyslexia versus typically developing readers) was highlighted as a significant mediator of the relationship between phonological awareness and syntactic awareness and between morphological awareness and syntactic awareness. Taken together, it could be suggested that both phonological awareness difficulties and morphological awareness difficulties of Greek-speaking children with dyslexia might explain syntactic awareness difficulties. These findings are discussed in light of current research on the nature of syntactic deficits in dyslexia.