“Occhio al morfema”. Movimenti oculari e lettura di parole derivate in bambini della scuola primaria

[Autom. eng. transl.] INTRODUCTION - Häikiö et al. (2011), in a study conducted with Finnish children, recorded eye movements while reading compounds and found that the use of the morphological structure in guiding text display depends on reading ability. In this work we intend to verify if Italian primary school children show, in the reading of derived words, visualization strategies corresponding to the morphological structure of the words themselves, considering not only the child's reading ability, but also the role of the lexical category of the root (name or verb) from which the word is derived. METHOD - Participants: 31 children attending classes III, IV and V of primary school (average age = 9 years; 13 M, 18 F). Stimuli: 42 names derived from names (eg humorist) and 29 names derived from verbs (eg punishment). Procedure: children's reading ability was assessed with standardized tests. Eye movements were recorded during the reading of experimental words via the RED500 eye-tracker (SensoMotoric Instruments). RESULTS - The duration of the first fixation is a function of the frequency of use of the root of the derived word, but only if this base is a verb. Children's reading ability was not significant. CONCLUSIONS - The work confirms what emerged in a previous study (Traficante et al., 2014) and indicates that the lexical category and the frequency of use of the root are grasped from the earliest stages of processing, even in young readers. This evidence encourages the use of reading enhancement interventions based on the morphological structure of words, an aspect that seems to be spontaneously captured by all children and that can be used to speed up decoding in children in difficulty, while also facilitating access to meaning.