Type of Document	Thesis
Author	Phythian-Sence, Caroline
Author's Email Address	phythian@psy.fsu.edu
URN	etd-11102006-123310
Title	What Do Children Know, When They Know a Word?
Degree	Master of Science
Department	Psychology, Department of
Advisory Committee	Advisor Name Title Richard K. Wagner Committee Chair Christopher Schatschneider Committee Member Michael P. Kaschak Committee Member
Keywords	Morphology Vocabulary Assessment CFA
Date of Defense	2006-10-18
Availability	unrestricted
Abstract Although word knowledge is often conceptualized as an “all or nothing” phenomenon, the dichotomy of this perspective may not capture what children actually know when they “know” a word. An alternative perspective, that word knowledge is multidimensional, was tested using confirmatory factor analysis. Expressive and receptive definitional knowledge, contextual knowledge, morphological knowledge, and conceptual knowledge were assessed using an adapted version of a protocol designed by Anglin (1993), on eighty-four 4th graders from a midsized, Southeastern city. Confirmatory factor analyses were used to test alternative models of the underlying dimensions of word knowledge. An a priori proposed model, with three dimensions representing morphological knowledge, receptive word knowledge and expressive word knowledge provided an excellent fit to the data. Additional analyses indicated that expressive and receptive vocabulary knowledge were equally related to reading comprehension, and that morphological knowledge was slightly more related to reading comprehension than were expressive and receptive vocabulary knowledge.
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