In an experimental design, we investigated how fifth-grade readers use morphological and contextual information to infer the meaning of unknown words, and to what extent this is related to their cognitive and linguistic skills. A group of 166 fifth-grade Dutch children (59 L1, 107 L2) performed a lexical inferencing task in which the availability of morphological and contextual information was manipulated. Readers used both morphological and contextual information in lexical inferencing. Good decoding skill was related to more use of morphological information. Reading comprehension skill was associated with the use of morphological and contextual cues. L1 and L2 readers did not differ with respect to the use of morphological information. L2 readers used contextual information less in their inferences than L1 readers did. This difference was driven by L2 readers with weak vocabulary. The use of contextual information was especially high in L1 readers with good reading comprehension skills, and especially low in L2 readers with low vocabulary. Results indicate that to access morphological information, decoding is crucial, whereas for contextual inferencing, a minimum of linguistic competence is needed, which makes it more challenging for L2 readers.

在实验设计中，我们调查了五年级的读者如何使用形态学和上下文信息来推断未知单词的含义，以及这在多大程度上与他们的认知和语言技能有关。一组166名荷兰五年级儿童（59名L1，107名L2）执行了词汇推理任务，其中操纵了形态和上下文信息的可用性。读者在词法推理中同时使用了形态学信息和上下文信息。良好的解码能力与形态信息的更多使用有关。阅读理解能力与形态和上下文线索的使用有关。L1和L2读者在形态信息的使用方面没有差异。二级读者在推理中所使用的上下文信息要少于一级读者。这种差异是由词汇量较弱的L2读者驱动的。在具有良好阅读理解能力的第一级读者中，上下文信息的使用尤其高，而在词汇量较低的第二级读者中，上下文信息的使用尤其低。结果表明，访问形态信息时，解码至关重要，而对于上下文推理，则需要最低的语言能力，这对L2读者来说更具挑战性。