The effects of morphological and syntactic knowledge on reading comprehension in spanish speaking children Simpson, Ian Craig Moreno-Pérez, Francisco Javier Rodríguez-Ortiz, Isabel de los Reyes Valdés-Coronel, Marta Saldaña Sage, David Spanish language Morphological knowledge Reading comprehension This study was possible thanks to the funding received from the Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (Spain), via its Plan Estatal 2013–2016 Excelencia–Proyectos I + D programme (PSI2015-65656-P). Reading comprehension is a complex task requiring many underlying skills. Syntactic awareness and morphological awareness are two such skills that have been shown to be related to reading comprehension. However, the majority of studies have been carried out in English, and very few have explored these skills in monolingual Spanish speaking children. Here we explored to what extent syntactic awareness and morphological awareness contributed to text comprehension in Spanish. 501 typically developing Spanish speaking 4th graders were assessed on non-verbal intelligence, word and nonword reading, oral vocabulary, morphological and syntactic knowledge, along with reading comprehension ability. After excluding children with poor decoding or low non-verbal intelligence, 234 children were retained for analysis. Multiple linear regression modelling was used to assess the unique contribution of each variable to reading comprehension. As per findings reported in English, syntactic knowledge was a significant predictor of comprehension after controlling for age, gender, non-verbal IQ, word reading and oral vocabulary, as well as morphological knowledge. In contrast, and contrary to results normally reported for English speaking children, morphological knowledge did not explain any variance in reading comprehension beyond that explained by the control variables. These results highlight the important contribution of syntactic knowledge to text comprehension in Spanish speaking children, as well as the importance of undertaking research in languages other than English. 2026-02-17T09:04:46Z 2026-02-17T09:04:46Z 2020 journal article Published version: Simpson, I. C., Moreno-Pérez, J. F., Rodríguez-Ortiz, I. R., Valdés-Coronel, M., & Saldaña, D. (2020). The Effects of Morphological and Syntactic Knowledge on Reading Comprehension in Spanish speaking Children. Reading and Writing, Volume 33 (2), 329-348. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11145-019-09964-5 0922-4777 1573-0905 https://hdl.handle.net/10481/111060 10.1007/s11145-019-09964-5 eng http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ open access Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 Internacional Springer Nature