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The English orthography represents the units of meaning (morphemes) as well as the units of sound in words. This experiment focused on 6- to 10-year-old children's sensitivity to the role that an understudied group of morphemes, derivations, plays in spelling. We asked children to circle the correct ending out of 3 phonologically plausible options for 2-morpheme words ending in derivations (e.g., lucky) and for 1-morpheme words with the same word-final letter sequence (e.g., study). The older children (approximately 9 years of age) were more likely to complete the endings correctly for derived words than for 1-morpheme words. This effect did not emerge for the younger children (approximately 7 years). These results help to specify the developmental trajectory of children's sensitivity to the role of morphemes in spelling.
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Sangster et al. (2011) studied this question.
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