New study investigates the role of morphological awareness in early literacy acquisition

The project involves Konstantin Mrosk as a research assistant at the Professorship of Developmental Psychology as well as Dr Jana Hasenäcker (Applied Linguistics/Psycholinguistics, University of Erfurt), Dr Christine Johannes, Developmental Psychology / General and Instructional Psychology, University of Erfurt) and Dr Astrid Haase (Educational Psychology, University of Göttingen) as cooperation partners.

Correlative studies show that morphological awareness, i.e. the awareness of the morphological structure of words and the ability to reflect on and manipulate these structures, is related to the acquisition of written language. However, additional experimental training studies with preschool children are required to test whether and to what extent it also affects the acquisition of written language. In the new project at the University of Erfurt, a programme for training morphological awareness in preschool children will first be developed. This will be followed by an experimental training study with two experimental groups (training of morphological awareness with and without writing) and an unsupported comparison group, in which children in their last year of kindergarten will participate.

"Based on our investigations, we can test whether morphological awareness has a causal and specific effect on the acquisition of written language," explains project manager Claudia Steinbrink. "Our study is the first to a) examine the differential effectiveness of preschool training in morphological awareness with and without the inclusion of writing and b) examine the effectiveness of training in morphological awareness at preschool age in German."