Given that reading comprehension is an interactive, developmental process of
simultaneously constructing and extracting meaning from text (RAND Reading
Study Group, 2002), there are at least two ways in which morphological awareness
can be hypothesized to influence this process. First, the word-specific knowledge
involved in morphological awareness may facilitate the comprehension of texts
involving particular morphologically complex words. In this sense, morphological
awareness is one aspect of what is termed depth of vocabulary knowledge, or the
richness of knowledge about the words that are known by an individual (Anderson
& Freebody, 1981). As an aspect of depth of vocabulary knowledge, understanding
of morphological relationships may thus influence reading comprehension independently
of breadth of vocabulary—the number of words known. Second, the
word-general ability to decompose morphologically complex words may lead to
more successful word learning (i.e., an increase in breadth of vocabulary) over time
and thereby equip readers better to succeed with reading comprehension.