Unraveling the complexity of the relations of metalinguistic skills to word reading with struggling adult readers: Shared, independent, and interactive effects

Abstract This study investigates the shared, independent, and interactive effects of metalinguistic skills (phonological awareness, morphological awareness, and orthographic knowledge) to word reading with a sample of struggling adult readers. Controlling for vocabulary knowledge, a second-order latent factor of metalinguistic awareness accounted for unique variance (62.5%) in adults’ word reading skills. Two-way latent interactions between the metalinguistic skills (phonological awareness × morphological awareness, morphological awareness × orthographic knowledge, and phonological awareness × orthographic knowledge) revealed unique interactive contributions (1%–5.2%) of these skills to word reading controlling for the metalinguistic skill main effects and vocabulary knowledge. In particular, high levels of morphological awareness are critical to word reading irrespective of high or low phonological awareness and orthographic knowledge. In addition, higher phonological awareness skills are critical to word reading irrespective of high or low orthographic knowledge. These results indicate the importance as well as the complexity of the nature of metalinguistic skills underlying word reading for struggling adult readers. The theoretical, empirical, and applied implications of these findings are discussed in the context of researchers and practitioners invested in improving outcomes in adult literacy programs.