How Morphology, Context, Vocabulary and Reading Shape Lexical Inference in Typical and Dyslexic Readers

Children’s ability to infer meanings of unfamiliar words during reading is thought to rely on the interplay between decoding, morphological awareness, contextual support, and vocabulary knowledge, but it remains unclear how these sources operate in typically developing (TD) readers compared to those with developmental dyslexia (DD). This study examined whether morphological cues (suffixes) or/and contextual information facilitate meaning inference and which variables predict performance. Sixty children (30 TD, 30 DD; aged 9–12) completed a battery of tasks assessing pseudoword decoding, expressive vocabulary (breadth) synonyms, antonyms (depth), morphological awareness (deriving and decomposing words), and reading comprehension. The main inference task consisted of 20 short stories in which pseudowords replaced target words; in half the stories, pseudowords included derivational suffixes, while in the other half no such clues were available. Results showed that TD children performed significantly better than DD peers across all tasks. Regression analyses revealed that vocabulary depth and morphological awareness predicted inferencing in both groups, but decoding was uniquely predictive for DD children and reading comprehension only for TD children. These findings suggest that while lexical inference in both groups appears to draw on vocabulary and morphology, TD children may additionally integrate higher-order comprehension, whereas DD children seem to remain more influenced by decoding and partial lexical cues.