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Do transposed-letter similarity effects occur at a morpheme level? Evidence for morpho-orthographic decomposition
Abstract
When does morphological decomposition occur in visual word recognition? An increasing body of evidence suggests the presence of early morphological processing. The present work investigates this issue via an orthographic similarity manipulation. Three masked priming lexical decision experiments were conducted to examine the transposed-letter similarity effect (e.g., jugde facilitates JUDGE more than the control jupbe) in polymorphemic and monomorphemic words. If morphological decomposition occurs at early stages of visual word recognition, we would expect an interaction with transposed-letter effects. Experiment 1 was carried out in Basque, which is an agglutinative language. The nonword primes were created by transposing two letters that either crossed the morphological boundaries of suffixes or did not. Results showed a transposed-letter effect for non-affixed words, whereas there were no signs of a transposed-letter effect across morpheme boundaries for affixed words. In Experiment 2, this issue was revisited in a non-agglutinative language (Spanish), with prefixed and suffixed word pairs. Again, results showed a significant transposed-letter effect for non-affixed words, whereas there were no signs of a transposed-letter effect across morpheme boundaries for affixed words (both prefixed words and suffixed words). Experiment 3 replicated the previous findings, and also revealed that, for polymorphemic words, transposed-letter priming effects occurred for within-morpheme transpositions. Taken together, these findings support the view that morphological decomposition operates at an early stage of visual word recognition.
... Such findings indicating that morphological decomposition is a process that takes place at very early, prelexical stages of visual word recognition have led to the question whether this process co-occurs with other early, low-level processes such as letter position coding and whether the recognition of morphologically complex words interacts with orthographical effects like the transposed-letter (TL) effect (Duñabeitia, Perea, & Carreiras, 2007. The TL effect occurs when a prime that involves two adjacent, transposed letters (the TL condition, as in jmup-JUMP) is significantly less disruptive than a prime where the same two letters are replaced by other letters (the substituted letter [SL] condition, as in jrap-JUMP). ...
... As a relatively higher level of position-specificity is required in the decoding of affixes, TLs would be expected to be more disruptive for morphemes and morpheme boundaries than for word internal letters. Morphological TL effects have been examined in many L1 masked TL priming studies (Christianson, Johnson, & Rayner, 2005;Duñabeitia et al., 2007, Perea & Carreiras, 2006Rueckl & Rimzhim, 2011;Taft & Nillsen, 2013). The results have mostly favored the obligatory decomposition theory as cross-morphemic transpositions were found to be more disruptive than intra-morphemic transpositions. ...
... The findings obtained from available L1 TL priming studies are still far from being clear-cut and point to different patterns of morphological processing. While some studies have reported the TL priming effect only for conditions that involve intramorphemic transposition (Christianson et al., 2005;Duñabeitia et al., 2007), others have concluded that the magnitude of priming does not depend on the locus of the transpositions (Rueckl & Rimzhim, 2011). ...
Research into nonnative (L2) morphological processing has produced largely conflicting findings. To contribute to the discussions surrounding the contradictory findings in the literature, we examined L2 morphological priming effects along with a transposed-letter (TL) methodology. Critically, we also explored the potential effects of individual differences in the reading networks of L2 speakers using a test battery of reading proficiency. A masked primed lexical decision experiment was carried out in which the same target (e.g., ALLOW) was preceded by a morphological prime ( allowable ), a TL-within prime ( all wo able ), an substituted letter (SL)-within prime ( all ve able ), a TL-across prime ( allo aw ble ), an SL-across prime ( allo im ble ), or an unrelated prime ( believable ). The average data yielded morphological priming but no significant TL priming. However, the results of an exploratory analysis of the potential effects of individual differences suggested that individual variability mediated the group-level priming patterns in L2 speakers. TL-within and TL-across priming effects were obtained only when the performance of participants on nonword reading was considered, while the magnitude of the morphological priming effects diminished as the knowledge of vocabulary expanded. The results highlight the importance of considering individual differences while testing L2 populations.
... Such findings indicating that morphological decomposition is a process that takes place at very early, prelexical stages of visual word recognition have led to the question whether this process co-occurs with other early, low-level processes such as letter position coding and whether the recognition of morphologically complex words interacts with orthographical effects like the transposed-letter (TL) effect (Duñabeitia, Perea, & Carreiras, 2007. The TL effect occurs when a prime that involves two adjacent, transposed letters (the TL condition, as in jmup-JUMP) is significantly less disruptive than a prime where the same two letters are replaced by other letters (the substituted letter [SL] condition, as in jrap-JUMP). ...
... As a relatively higher level of position-specificity is required in the decoding of affixes, TLs would be expected to be more disruptive for morphemes and morpheme boundaries than for word internal letters. Morphological TL effects have been examined in many L1 masked TL priming studies (Christianson, Johnson, & Rayner, 2005;Duñabeitia et al., 2007, Perea & Carreiras, 2006Rueckl & Rimzhim, 2011;Taft & Nillsen, 2013). The results have mostly favored the obligatory decomposition theory as cross-morphemic transpositions were found to be more disruptive than intra-morphemic transpositions. ...
... The findings obtained from available L1 TL priming studies are still far from being clear-cut and point to different patterns of morphological processing. While some studies have reported the TL priming effect only for conditions that involve intramorphemic transposition (Christianson et al., 2005;Duñabeitia et al., 2007), others have concluded that the magnitude of priming does not depend on the locus of the transpositions (Rueckl & Rimzhim, 2011). ...
While inquiries into how morphologically complex words (e.g., allowable) are processed in a native (L1) language have produced largely uniform findings supporting the obligatory decomposition account, the findings obtained from nonnative (L2) language processing studies are mostly conflicting, pointing to different patterns of morphological processing. To contribute to the discussions surrounding the theoretically and empirically contradictory findings in the literature, this study examined the potential effects of individual differences in bilinguals’ reading networks. A masked primed lexical decision experiment was carried out in which the same target (e.g., ALLOW) was preceded by a morphological prime (allowable), a TL-within prime (allwoable), an SL-within prime (allveable), a TL-across prime (alloawble), an SL-across prime (alloimble), or an Unrelated prime (believable). The results revealed that individual differences critically modulate the priming effects found in bilingual readers in L2. For low proficient readers, TL priming effects were greater for within-morpheme transpositions than between-morpheme transpositions, while no such difference occurred for high proficient readers. Moreover, as the reading proficiency increased, transposed letter priming vanished while morphological priming shrank.
Keywords: morphological processing, TL priming, morphological priming, individual differences, bilingual processing.
... La procédure morpho-orthographique est activée même lorsque la base subit une modification orthographique minime suite au processus de dérivation (e.g. metallic -metal, McCormick et al., 2008), ou lorsque la position des lettres est inversée dans les morphèmes, en anglais (Christianson, Johnson, & Rayner, 2005), en basque et en espagnol (Duñabeitia, Perea, & Carreiras, 2007). Dans la mesure où le traitement des lettres est un mécanisme hautement flexible qui implique également le codage des lettres adjacentes (Perea & Lupker, 2003;Schoonbaert & Grainger, 2004), une modification orthographique de la base de une à deux lettres n'empêche pas le système d'extraire les unités morpho-orthographiques à l'écrit. ...
... En revanche, nous avons fait l'hypothèse que les lecteurs les plus avancés devraient être moins pénalisés par une modification formelle de la base dans les traitements morphologiques dans la mesure où ils ne sont pas -ou peu -influencés par ces modifications à l'oral. De plus, leur système de traitement orthographique des morphèmes est flexible (Duñabeitia et al., 2007;Perea & Lupker, 2003) ce qui renforce cette hypothèse. ...
Nous avons examiné à travers six études le rôle de la morphologie dans la reconnaissance des mots écrits, chez des enfants au développement normal des habiletés de lecture et chez des adolescents dyslexiques. L’étude 1 indique que les lecteurs sont influencés dès le CE1 par la présence d’unités morphémiques dans lesmots et dans les pseudomots pour réaliser une tâche de décision lexicale. Cet effet s’observe également chez les dyslexiques dans l’étude 2. Le paradigme d’amorçage a ensuite permis de dissocier les effets liés au partage formel et sémantique inhérent à la morphologie (e.g. fillette – fille vs. baguette – bague), et d’en examiner l’impact en fonction du décours temporel de la reconnaissance des mots écrits (60 ms, 250 ms et800 ms). Les normo-lecteurs (étude 3) ne sont influencés que par les propriétés orthographiques des morphèmes lors des premières étapes de la reconnaissance. Les représentations associées aux propriétés sémantiques des morphèmes sont progressivement activées, à 250 ms chez les lecteurs les plus avancés (CM2 et 5ème) et à 800 ms chez les lecteurs plus jeunes (CE2 et CM1). En revanche, les dyslexiques ne sont influencés que par les propriétés sémantiques des morphèmes, quel que soit le temps de présentation de l’amorce (étude 4). L’étude 5 indique que les traitements morpho-orthographiques qui caractérisent les premières étapes de la reconnaissance chez les normo-lecteurs nécessitent un appariement lettre à lettre entre l’amorce et la cible du CE2 au CM2, mais sont plus flexibles chez les lecteurs plus avancés (5ème). Enfin, la transparence formelle n’influence pas le traitement de la structure morphologique chez les dyslexiques (étude 6).
... Researchers have debaed upon whether morphological processing is bound with orthographic information at the earlier stages of visual word recognition or it is bound with semantic information at a later stages of visual word recognition. Studies that support the morpho-orthographic processing have reported the morpheme boundary effect on the TCE-slower reaction times in the case of transposition within a morpheme (e.g., violinist in Spanish violinista, vioilnista-within the morpheme boundaries) than for transposition across a morpheme boundary (violinsta-across a morpheme boundary) [31][32][33][34][35]. As the TCE is considered to occur at a very early stage of visual word recognition [36,37], researchers argue that the morpheme boundary effect modulating the TCE is attributable to early orthographic processing. ...
... As expected, behavioral data showed TCE in the TSW condition and a reduction of the TCE in the TSA condition. These findings are consistent with the previously reported morpheme boundary modulation of the TCE [31][32][33][34][35]. fMRI data revealed increased activation in the mPFC and left MTG when the morpheme boundary fell between syllables. ...
When people confuse and reject a non-word that is created by switching two adjacent letters from an actual word, is called the transposition confusability effect (TCE). The TCE is known to occur at the very early stages of visual word recognition with such unit exchange as letters or syllables, but little is known about the brain mechanisms of TCE. In this study, we examined the neural correlates of TCE and the effect of a morpheme boundary placement on TCE. We manipulated the placement of a morpheme boundary by exchanging places of two syllables embedded in Korean morphologically complex words made up of lexical morpheme and grammatical morpheme. In the two experimental conditions, the transposition syllable within-boundary condition (TSW) involved exchanging two syllables within the same morpheme, whereas the across-boundary condition (TSA) involved the exchange of syllables across the stem and grammatical morpheme boundary. During fMRI, participants performed the lexical decision task. Behavioral results revealed that the TCE was found in TSW condition, and the morpheme boundary, which is manipulated in TSA, modulated the TCE. In the fMRI results, TCE induced activation in the left inferior parietal lobe (IPL) and intraparietal sulcus (IPS). The IPS activation was specific to a TCE and its strength of activation was associated with task performance. Furthermore, two functional networks were involved in the TCE: the central executive network and the dorsal attention network. Morpheme boundary modulation suppressed the TCE by recruiting the prefrontal and temporal regions, which are the key regions involved in semantic processing. Our findings propose the role of the dorsal visual pathway in syllable position processing and that its interaction with other higher cognitive systems is modulated by the morphological boundary in the early phases of visual word recognition.
... 2) was studied with post-masked priming. Complex words and complex pseudo-words were grouped in high and low family size groups and primed by their stems (trabajo → trabajador [work → worker]) or by their suffixes (dor → trabajador; dor → *mesador [er → *tabler])-it is worth noting that in Spanish it has been demonstrated that suffixes can prime complex words [14,15]. In their first experiment, high family size stems elicited slower reaction times than low family size stems (an inhibitory effect of the family size) while in the second experiment, the results showed facilitative effects for affix family size i.e., the stem family size effect was found to be inhibitory while the affix family size effect was found to be facilitative. ...
... In the center of the screen, with visual angles around 0.8°-4° in width according to subject- screen distance, subjects were serially presented, in a sequence, a fixation point "+" for 500ms to focus attention on the point where the stimulus was to appear, and then a post- masked word-string prime for 70ms. According to evidence of word visual processing, this prime duration guarantees pre- conscious sub-lexical processing [14,43]. ...
In this study, behavioral and EEG measurements were taken while participants performed two priming lexical decision experiments on complex words. In Experiment I stems of high and low family size were used as primes. Behavioral results show an inhibitory effect for stem family size whereas time-frequency responses (TFR) show significant oscillatory brain activity in the range of beta- band and theta-band on right and left temporal sites respectively, both related to lexical status of word patterns. In Experiment II, in which suffixes of high and low family size were used as primes, the effect of family size is facilitatory. Concerning ERP analysis on waveform amplitudes, an early significant lexical status effect emerges although it disappears over time. No significant oscillatory brain activity emerges concerning time frequency responses (TFR). According to an information- gain probabilistic model, the participants modulate their responses in terms of the information provided by the different morphemes used as primes.
... A large body of research has demonstrated that the visual system indeed processes words through constituent morphological representations. This has been shown using a variety of behavioural methodologies, and across a number of different languages [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16], though see ([17-23] for a non-decompositional stance on visual word processing. ...
... In studies of written-word processing, low-gamma (30-50 Hz) has been associated with communication across brain areas [56] memory retrieval [57], and responses to written words in the temporal lobe [58][59][60][61]. In lower frequencies, theta (4-7 Hz) and alpha (8)(9)(10)(11)(12)(13) have been associated with semantic memory operations [62] (for a review see [63]) and working memory [64,65]. Effects of syntactic complexity have been found in the beta range (15)(16)(17)(18)(19)(20)(21)(22)(23)(24)(25)(26)(27)(28)(29)(30), in comparing subject relative and object relative clauses [66] as well as right-branching and centre-embedded relative clauses [67]. ...
The field of psycho- and neuro-linguistics has long-debated the decompositional model of visual word processing: Are written words processed via the visual forms of stem and affix morphemes, or as complex wholes? Although many have now settled upon a decompositional view, it is unclear what heuristic the brain uses to generate these visual morpheme-forms in the first place. Here we conduct a magneto-encephalography study to test two hypotheses for how this may be done: i) the brain encodes representations of the morphemes that follow the morpho-syntactic rules governing constituents: A stem morpheme will be represented if the word obeys the grammatical behaviour associated with its suffix; ii) the brain only encodes stem morphemes that occur with multiple suffixes or as words in isolation. Our results indicate that words with morpho-syntactic wellformedness as stem-suffix combinations are decomposed by the system, thus supporting the former hypothesis. This suggests that knowledge of morpho-syntactic rules can be used to form morphological representations of written words, in absence of independent experience with all of their constituent morphemes. Possible mechanisms supporting this computation are discussed.
... In addition, speakers would need more time to process with low base (i.e., the frequency of the base) and surface (i.e., the occurrence of the whole word) frequency (Taft & Ardasinski, 2006). Experimental studies have found evidence for this model, both for native speakers (Ahn et al., 2014;Beyersmann et al., 2013;Coughlin & Tremblay, 2015;Duñabeitia et al., 2007;Jacob et al., 2019;Lewis et al., 2011;Longtin & Meunier, 2005;Rastle et al., 2000;Stockall & Marantz, 2006;Taft, 2004) and for L2 learners (Coughlin & Tremblay, 2015;De Grauwe et al., 2014;Foote, 2017;Lehtonen & Laine, 2003;Liang & Chen, 2014). ...
Aims/Objectives
The present study investigates whether lexical frequency can be increased experimentally, and whether an increase in lexical frequency facilitates L2 morphological processing.
Design
English L2 learners of Spanish were randomly assigned to either a treatment or control group. Both groups completed a pre/post lexical decision task containing L2 words with either two or three morphemes, and a pre/post lexical frequency task. In addition, the treatment group completed four sessions in which they read texts containing low frequency words.
Data/analysis
Linear mixed models and Bayes factors were used to analyze participants’ performance.
Findings/Conclusions
Both groups took significantly longer to process morphologically complex words with three than with two morphemes at pretest. While this pattern was observed also at posttest for the control group, the treatment group took roughly the same to process both types of words following training. Taken together, the findings suggest that an increased exposure to low-frequency L2 words switches learners’ morphological computation strategies from decomposition to whole word processing.
Originality
While previous cross-sectional studies have assessed the role of frequency on L2 morphological decomposition, this has not been confirmed by longitudinal data.
Significance/Implications
The results support hybrid word recognition models claiming that frequency modulates morphological computation.
... To test this tolerance to variations in letter position, many investigations have used transposed-letter manipulations such as the nonword JUGDE derived from the real word JUDGE (e.g., Perea & Lupker, 2003) as a means to infer the nature of letter position coding on the basis of responses to such transposed-letter stimuli. Overall, these studies have shown that letter strings formed by transposing two letters of a real word are perceived as being more perceptually similar to the base word than letter strings formed by substituting two letters of the base word (Duñabeitia et al., 2007;Frankish & Turner, 2007;Guerrera & Forster, 2008;O'Connor & Forster, 1981;Perea & Lupker, 2003Perea et al., 2005Perea et al., , 2008aPerea et al., , 2008bSchoonbaert & Grainger, 2004). These findings provide support for flexible letter position coding mechanisms such as implemented in models that use relative position coding (Grainger & van Heuven, 2004;Hannagan & Grainger, 2012;Whitney, 2001) and also models that implement positional noise operating on top of a rigid slot-based position coding mechanism (Gomez et al., 2008;Norris;2006). ...
To probe the processing of gaze-dependent positional information and gaze-independent order information when matching strings of characters, we compared effects of visual similarity (hypothesized to affect gaze-centered position coding) with the effects of character transpositions (hypothesized to affect the processing of gaze-independent order information). In Experiment 1, we obtained empirical measures of visual similarity for pairs of characters, separately for uppercase consonants and keyboard symbols. These similarity values were then used in Experiment 2 to create pairs of four-character stimuli (four letters or four symbols) that could differ by substituting one character with a different character from the same category that was visually similar (e.g., FJDK–FJBK) or dissimilar (e.g., FJVK–FJBK). We also compared the effects of transposing two characters (e.g., FBJK–FJBK) with substituting two characters (e.g., FHSK–FJBK). “Different” responses were harder to make in the single substitution condition when the substituted character was visually similar, and this effect was not conditioned by character type. On the other hand, transposition costs (i.e., greater difficulty in detecting a difference with transpositions compared with double substitutions) were greater for letters compared with symbols. We conclude that visual similarity mainly affects the generic gaze-dependent processing of complex visual features, and that the encoding of letter order involves a mechanism that is specific to reading.
... Desta forma, os resultados encontrados nos adultos seguem na linha dos modelos interativos, uma vez que estes sugerem que as palavras conhecidas pelos informantes são acedidas diretamente no léxico (modelos full listing). Uma vez que a percentagem de erros na decisão lexical é mínima (4,9%) estes modelos poderão constituir uma explicação para os resultados encontrados.Por outro lado, os vários estudos existentes nos adultos (e.g.Rastle, Davis, & New, 2004; Laudana, Badecker e Caramazza, 1989;Duñabeitia, Perea, & Carreiras, 2007) são realizados com paradigmas semelhantes ao utilizado por nós, no entanto, as proximidades morfológicas encontram-se ao nível da base e não ao nível do sufixo. Por exemplo no estudode Rastle, Davis, & New (2004) foi utilizado também um paradigma de priming morfológico com decisão lexical onde os autores compararam pares morfologicamente relacionados (golden -gold) ou pares com pseudo-palavras em que a sobreposição ocorria nos limites da base (mother-moth) com palavras sem relação morfológica (spinach-spin). ...
Using a masked priming paradigm we investigated the effect of a derived word prime on the recognition of a target in 3 conditions: Morphological Related Words, Ortographically Overlap Words and Unrelated Words. We tested Portuguese children in the 4th grade (N=27) and college students (N=36), using a lexical decision task. The subjects saw the rime for 50 ms. Results show differences in the word processing, both for children and adults. This indicate that morphological information exert effects in the early stages of word processing.
... For example, when the transposed letters are the first two in the word (e.g. <*csout> for <scout>), or are at the edge of a morpheme boundary (<*dresesr> for <dresser>), the effect disappears (Duñabeitia et al., 2007, Kinoshita et al., 2009). In addition, the effect is sensitive to the status of the letter as a consonant or vowel: there is priming when consonants are transposed across a vowel (<*condiser> for <consider>), but not when vowels are transposed across consonants (<*cinsoder>; Perea & Lupker, 2004). ...
Languages with non-concatenative morphology are often claimed to include consonantal root morphemes in their lexicon. Previous psycholinguistic studies strengthened the Root Hypothesis, showing that words in Arabic, Hebrew, and Maltese prime targets with the same stem consonants, with semantic relation playing a limited role. We provide a re-analysis of previous psycholinguistic studies and claim that a model of word recognition with an inherent consonant bias can explain these findings equally well, making the notion of the consonantal root as a morphological unit superfluous for word recognition models, and thus undermining the psycholinguistic argument for the consonantal root. We further draw attention to parallel effects of form similarity in word recognition in languages with concatenative morphology (e.g. Dutch, English, French). Our account therefore puts speakers and readers of Semitic languages on a par with their Indo-European peers.
... This is an important result, but Georgian is chosen because of its parallels to Icelandic, not because of its ergative alignment. Similarly, Duñabeitia et al. (2007) compare morphological decomposition in Spanish and Basque, but the choice of Basque is motivated by its agglutinative properties, not by its ergativity; Erdocia et al. (2012) likewise offer an impressive study of verb-final and verb-medial orders in Basque, which are orthogonal to ergativity. We will not discuss "accidental tourist" studies further in this chapter (although we will briefly return to Skopeteas et al. (2012) in section 5). ...
As any quick survey of the syntactic literature will show, there are almost as many different views of ergativity as there are so-called ergative languages (languages whose basic clause structure instantiates an ergative case-marking or agreement pattern). While ergativity is sometimes referred to as a typological characteristic of languages, research on the phenomenon has made it more and more clear that (a) languages do not fall clearly into one or the other of the ergative/absolutive vs. nominative/accusative categories and (b) ergative characteristics are not consistent from language to language. This volume contributes to both the theoretical and descriptive literature on ergativity and adds results from experimental investigations of ergativity. The chapters cover overview approaches within generative, typological, and functional paradigms, as well as approaches to the core morpho-syntactic building blocks of an ergative construction (absolutive case and licensing, and ergative case and licensing); common related constructions (anti-passive); common related properties (split-ergativity, syntactic vs. morphological ergativity, word order, the interaction of agreement patterns and ergativity); and extensions and permutations of ergativity (nominalizations, voice systems). While the editors all work within the generative framework and investigate the syntactic properties of ergativity through fieldwork, and many of the chapters represent similar research, there are also chapters representing different frameworks (functional, typological) and different approaches (experimental, diachronic). The theoretical chapters touch on many different languages representing a wide range of language families, and there are sixteen case studies that are more descriptive in nature, attesting to both the pervasiveness and diversity of ergative patterns.
... Over the past decades, many morphological processing theories have emerged from the field of visual word recognition (Diependaele et al., 2009;Duñabeitia et al., 2007;Grainger et al., 1991;Grainger & Ziegler, 2011;Longtin et al., 2003;Rastle, 2019;Rastle & Davis, 2008;Rastle et al., 2004). These theories make different assumptions with respect to the time-course of morphological processing during reading, with some predicting that the early stages of morphological processing are semantically "blind" (Beyersmann et al., 2016;Longtin et al., 2003;Rastle et al., 2004), whereas others assume that semantics do already assert an influence on morphological processing during the initial stages of complex word recognition (Feldman et al., 2009(Feldman et al., , 2015. ...
German skilled readers have been found to engage in morphological and syllable-based processing in visual word recognition. However, the relative reliance on syllables and morphemes in reading multi-syllabic complex words is still unresolved. The present study aimed to unveil which of these sub-lexical units are the preferred units of reading by employing eye-tracking technology. Participants silently read sentences while their eye movements were recorded. Words were visually marked by the use of color alternation (Experiment 1) or hyphenation (Experiment 2), either at syllable boundary (e.g., Kir-schen), at morpheme boundary (e.g., Kirsch-en) or within the units themselves (e.g., Ki-rschen). A control condition without disruptions was used as a baseline (e.g., Kirschen). The results of Experiment 1 showed that eye-movements were not modulated by color alternations. The results of Experiment 2 indicated that hyphens disrupting syllables had a larger inhibitory effect on reading times than hyphens disrupting morphemes, suggesting that eye-movements in German skilled readers are more influenced by syllablic than morphological structure.
... De hecho, las diferentes propuestas sobre la representación de las familias morfológicas en el lexicón mental (Segui y Zubizarreta, 1985;Taft y Forster, 1975) coinciden en que la familia morfológica es una realidad cognitiva relevante en el acceso al léxico. En las redes léxicosemánticas las palabras estarían vinculadas no solo por medio de sus raíces, sino también por los afijos que comparten (Duñabeitia, Perea y Carreiras, 2007). ...
Las aportaciones entre el conocimiento léxico y el morfológico son bidireccionales en el desarrollo de las capacidades lingüísticas. Estas relaciones se han estudiado ampliamente en las primeras etapas educativas vinculadas al desarrollo de la comprensión lectora mientras que no tanto en la adolescencia y primera juventud. Este trabajo aborda las relaciones que existen entre la productividad léxica, medida a través de una tarea de léxico disponible, y la conciencia morfológica derivativa en tres grupos de estudiantes, dos de educación secundaria (12 y 15 años) y uno de primer año de universidad (18 años) con una metodología pseudolongitudinal. Los resultados nos indican que, entre la diversidad de habilidades morfológicas incorporadas al estudio, las tareas de producción morfológica libre a partir de una base y un sufijo son las que mejor predicen la productividad en el vocabulario disponible. Así mismo, los resultados refuerzan la necesidad de continuar entrenado el conocimiento morfológico metalingüístico a lo largo de todas las etapas educativas preuniversitarias para favorecer el desarrollo del vocabulario. Abstract Contributions between lexical and morphological knowledge are bidirectional in the development of linguistic abilities. This relationship has been widely studied in the early educational stages, related to the development of reading comprehension, while not so broadly in adolescence and early youth. This paper addresses connections between lexical productivity, measured through an available lexicon task, and derivative morphological awareness in two groups of Secondary Education students (12- and 15-year-old) and a third group of first year of college students (18-year-old) with a pseudolongitudinal design. The results indicate that the task of free morphological production from a base and a suffix is the best predictor of available vocabulary, among the morphological skills incorporated into the study. Likewise, the results reinforce the need to incorporate metalinguistic morphological knowledge in pedagogical designs throughout all pre-university educational stages to promote vocabulary development. Keywords: available lexicon, morphological awareness, derivational morphology, Secondary Education, linguistic development
... Graphemic similarity in cursive scripts makes word recognition during reading challenging (Boudelaa et al., 2020;Duñabeitia et al., 2007;Marcet & Perea, 2018). The legibility of the letters in Latin alphabet with discrete (i.e., detached) graphemes-while coded in massive clusters such as words-has been measured in numerous experiments and the common finding is that visually similar letters can cause confusion and difficulties in word recognition (Abu-Rabia & Awward, 2004;Boles & Clifford, 1989;Mueller & Weidemann, 2012;Podgorny & Garner, 1979). ...
In this study, we compared children’s and adults’ ability to accurately identify target words in written minimal pairs (WMPs) with graphemically similar letters while accounting for factors such as gender, similarity of the middle letter in WMPs, mono- versus dimorphemic WMPs, number of syllable, homography, and imageability. Fifty children and fifty adults were exposed to a distractor stimulus as a pre-mask, followed by the target, and then a post-mask stimulus. Subsequently, the corresponding WMPs including the target word and its graphemically minimal contrast were presented to the participants to obtain their reaction time (RT) in accurately identifying the target word. Results demonstrated that children tend to slow down their reaction as a compensatory strategy to circumvent their less mature knowledge of graphophonic units/morphemes to achieve accuracy during word recognition. In addition, among all controlled factors, children’s RT was significantly influenced by similarity of the middle letter in the WMPs. Adults’ RT, however, was influenced by factors such as gender, similarity of the middle letter in WMPs, and homography.
... As the effect that was being reexamined here was a null effect, it was necessary to base any power calculations on a significant effect size obtained in a slightly different priming experiment (h p 2 = .215; Duñabeitia et al., 2007a). Using G*Power 3.1 software, it was determined that a power of .80 is achieved in that situation using 32 participants. ...
Using two-character Chinese word targets in a masked priming lexical-decision task, Gu and colleagues (2015) demonstrated a significant transposed character (TC) priming effect. More importantly, the priming effect was the same size for single-morpheme words and multiple-morpheme words, suggesting that TC priming effects are not influenced by morphemic structure. In Chinese, there are, however, two types of single-morpheme words, single-morpheme simple words (e.g., [similar to practice in English]) and single-morpheme complex words (e.g., [similar to carpet in English in that both components are words themselves and, hence, when presented in transposed order, may activate morphological information reflecting the individual components rather than the word itself]), a contrast that Gu et al. did not examine. In Experiment 1, we replicated Gu et al.'s finding of equal TC priming effects for their single- and multiple-morpheme words, although our priming effects were noticeably smaller than theirs. In Experiment 2, we split the single-morpheme condition in order to examine the TC priming effects for single-morpheme simple words, single-morpheme complex words and multiple-morpheme words. The results showed that the single-morpheme complex words produced the smallest priming effect, indicating that transposed morphemes can influence masked priming in Chinese; however, apparently only in an inhibitory fashion. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).
... Typically, primes with transposed letter order (thus preserving letter identity but not letter position information) result in facilitation in identifying the target word comparable with identity primes (e.g., JUGDE as a prime for judge), suggesting that there is a good deal of flexibility in letter position encoding. In single word paradigms, TL prime benefits are widely reported in languages such as English, French, Dutch, and Spanish [4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14]. In these languages morphology is sequential and concatenated in nature, and lexical organization is believed to be orthography-based, with entries that share letters, or are orthographic neighbors being clustered together in the lexicon (see [15] for review). ...
Evidence shows that skilled readers extract information about upcoming words in the parafovea. Using the boundary paradigm, we investigated native Arabic readers' processing of orthographic, morphological, and semantic information available parafoveally. Target words were embedded in frame sentences, and prior to readers fixating them, one of the following previews were made available: (a) Identity preview; (b) Preview that shared the pattern morpheme with the target; (c) Preview that shared the root morpheme with the target; (d) Preview that was a synonym with the target word; (e) Preview with two of the root letters were transposed thus creating a new root, while preserving all letter identities of the target; (f) Preview with two of the root letters were transposed thus creating a pronounceable pseudo root, while also preserving all letter identities of the target; and (g) Previews that was unrelated to the target word and shared no information with it. The results showed that identity, root-preserving, and synonymous preview conditions yielded preview benefit. On the other hand, no benefit was obtained from the pattern-preserving previews, and significant disruption to processing was obtained from the previews that contained transposed root letters, particularly when this letter transposition created a new real root. The results thus reflect Arabic readers' dependance on morphological and semantic information, and suggest that these levels of representation are accessed as early as orthographic information. Implications for theory- and model-building, and the need to accommodate early morphological and semantic processing activities in more comprehensive models are further discussed.
... In this model, frequency effects emerge because the entries are ordered based on their frequency, with the highest frequency entries being first on the search. The affix-stripping model is based on evidence from L1 studies (e.g., Beyersmann et al., 2013;Coughlin & Tremblay, 2015;Duñabeitia, Perea & Carreiras, 2007;Lewis, Solomyak & Marantz, 2011;Longtin & Meunier, 2005;Rastle, Davis, Marslen-Wilson & Tyler, 2000;Stockall & Marantz, 2006;Taft, 2004) and L2 studies (e.g., Coughlin & Tremblay, 2015;De Grauwe, Lemhöfer, Willems & Schriefers, 2014;Foote, 2017;Lehtonen & Laine, 2003;Liang & Chen, 2014) using a variety of experimental paradigms, from unprimed and primed lexical decision tasks to neurocognitive techniques. For example, Foote (2017), one of the very few L2 studies with Spanish, explored whether intermediate and advanced anglophone learners of Spanish processed morphologically complex words in a native-like manner. ...
Surface frequency and proficiency modulate visual morphological processing in second language (L2) learners, but less is known about auditory morphological processing. Moreover, working memory affects morphosyntactic processing, but it is unclear whether it also modulates word structure processing. In the present study, Spanish monolinguals and beginner and advanced L2 learners of Spanish completed an auditory lexical decision task in Spanish containing verbs varying in morphological complexity, an individual surface frequency task, and a working memory task. Beginner L2 learners needed more time to process infrequent morphologically complex words, but monolinguals and advanced L2 learners were unaffected by morphological complexity or surface frequency. Also, working memory did not modulate morphological processing. Taken together, the findings suggest a dual-route mechanism at initial stages of L2 acquisition and a whole-word route for Spanish monolinguals and advanced L2 learners. The findings also support the extension of dual-route models to L2 populations and suggest that the selection of a morphological processing route results from linguistic rather than cognitive reasons. Preprint available at https://psyarxiv.com/2f3ns
... Compounding refers to the combination of two words which denote the name of a single concept even though they consist of two different words each of which has a different meaning when in isolation (Schlücker & Plag, 2011). The processing of compound words has been investigated in both comprehension (e.g., De Jong et al., 2002;Duñabeitia et al., 2007;Kuperman et al., 2009) and production tasks (e.g., Bien et al., 2005;Gumnior et al., 2006) involving both children and adults. ...
Compound production by bidialectal and bilingual children has received scarce attention in terms of research since most of the studies in the literature focus on monolingual populations. Such investigations can offer an understanding of morphological acquisition in bidialectal and bilingual speakers. Also, it has been proposed that formal schooling enhances metalinguistic awareness and contributes to better control of the native language. The present study aims to investigate the Greek noun (noun + noun) and verbal (verb + verb) compound production patterns of Cypriot Greek-Standard Modern Greek bidialectal children and bidialectal plus bilingual children (English) (henceforth bilingual), and the effect of formal education on these productions. To this purpose, 35 preschool and first-grade bidialectal and bilingual children who permanently live in Cyprus participated in an experimental study in which they were instructed to produce Greek compound words after watching pictures and clips in a controlled environment. The results showed that bidialectal preschoolers outperformed bilingual preschoolers in the formation of correct compounds and they had relatively fewer errors than bilinguals, while there was a prevalent interference of the local dialect in their productions. Also, first-grade bidialectals demonstrated better performance than preschool bidialectals in the formation of correct compounds and had fewer errors in compound formation, but bilingual first-graders had worse overall performance than bilingual preschoolers. It is assumed that these differences are affected by the children's linguistic repertoire and their attunement to the speech input of their environment. The study offers useful insights into how bidialectal and bilingual children construct compounds in an underresearched linguistic context and demonstrates the effect of sociolinguistic factors on compound production.
... Boudelaa et al. (2019) Perea, Abu Mallouh, & Carreiras, 2010;Velan & Frost, 2007, 2011 for similar results in other tasks in both Arabic and Hebrew). These findings stand in stark contrast to findings from English and other European languages where primes or parafoveal previews containing transposed-letter (TL) pairs (e.g., golve as a prime for the target glove) typically facilitate target-word processing relative to primes or previews containing substituted-letter (SL) pairs (e.g., gatve-glove; see Brysbaert, 2001;Dunabeitia, Perea, & Carreiras, 2007;Johnson, Perea, & Rayner, 2007;Kinoshita & Norris, 2009;Perea & Lupker, 2003). These findings suggest that the cognitive systems mediating letter-order perception can adapt to accommodate Semitic versus European writing systems (e.g., Frost, 2012Frost, , 2015, with rigid letter-position coding for Semitic languages and a more flexible letterposition coding for European languages. ...
Current reading models were largely designed to explain findings from experiments of the reading of English and other European languages (Reichle, 2020, Computational models of reading: A handbook). Recent evidence from studies of other languages and writing systems (e.g., Chinese) has demonstrated the need to critically evaluate the assumptions of these models, and whether they are sufficient to explain the full range of findings related to reading, as required, for example, to understand the universal and specific cognitive principles that support reading. In this article, we review the recent behavioural and cognitive‐neuroscience research on the reading of Arabic, a world language that until recently has received scant attention despite the fact that its writing system poses fundamental challenges for current models of reading. We also highlight the points of convergence and difference between what has been learned about the reading of Arabic and the reading of another, more widely studied Semitic language, Hebrew. We then discuss the theoretical implications of these findings for existing models of reading.
... In particular, there should be a processing advantage when the compound is correctly spelled. However, disrupting the morpheme boundary should make it more difficult to recover the morphemes (Christianson et al., 2005;Duñabeitia, Perea, & Carreiras, 2007) and, thus, should attenuate or eliminate the processing advantage for compound words. The possibility that the advantage would be attenuated rather than eliminated comes from previous research using masked priming that found that disruptions at the morpheme boundary do not entirely disrupt the recovery of morphoorthographic units (e.g., Christianson et al., 2005;Perea & Carreiras, 2006;Rueckl & Rimzhim, 2011;Sánchez-Gutiérrez & Rastle, 2013; see also Beyersmann, McCormick, & Rastle, 2013, for a discussion of data on this issue). ...
Three experiments using a spelling error detection task investigated the extent to which morphemes and pseudomorphemes affect word processing. We compared the processing of transparent compound words (e.g., doorbell), pseudocompound words (e.g., carpet), and matched control words (e.g., tomato). In half of the compound and pseudocompound words, spelling errors were created by transposing adjacent letters and in half of the control words, errors were created by transposing letters at the same location as the matched compound or pseudocompound words. Correctly spelled compound words were more easily processed than matched control words, but this advantage was removed when letter transpositions were introduced at the morpheme boundary. In contrast, misspelled pseudocompound words showed a processing deficit relative to their matched control words when letter transpositions were introduced at the (pseudo)morpheme boundary. The results strongly suggest that morphological processing is attempted obligatorily when the orthography indicates that morphological structure is present. However, the outcomes of the morphological processing attempts are different for compounds and pseudocompounds, as might be expected, given that only the compounds have a morphological structure that matches the structure suggested by the orthography. The findings reflect 2 effects: an orthographic effect that is facilitatory and not sensitive to morphological structure of the whole word, and a morphemic effect that is facilitatory for compounds but inhibitory for pseudocompounds.
... Extant research has reached a strong consensus over the past years (Crepaldi et al., 2013;Grainger, Colé and Segui, 1991;Rastle et al., 2004) with respect to decomposition of morphemic constituents. One essential study favoring early morphological decomposition was carried out by Duñabeitia et al (2006), using a masked priming task in a transposed letter paradigm. Target words were presented in prior to primes that were 1) identical except for two transposed letters across the morphemic boundary (e.g., reaedr -READER), 2) identical except for the substitution of two letters that crossed its morphemic boundary (e.g., reagtr -READER). ...
... The reported findings on the interaction between letter positioning and morphological decomposition are mixed. Some studies have failed to find across-morpheme TL priming (Christianson, Johnson, & Rayner, 2005;Duñabeitia, Perea, & Carreiras, 2007), while others report across-morpheme TL priming that was comparable in magnitude to within-morpheme TL priming (Beyersmann et al., 2012;Beyersmann, McCormick, & Rastle, 2013;Rueckl & Rimzhim, 2011;Sánchez-Gutiérrez & Rastle, 2013;Zargar & Witzel, 2017). Thus, the debate about the temporal and causal relations between letter positioning and morphological decomposition remains unresolved. ...
... Statistical power is a potentially important concern given previous null results reported by Taft (2009, 2011), and given that the prediction based on Frost (2012a) is that we may not observe the usual transposed letter masked priming effect in Korean. Previous research in this domain has shown wide variation in sample size: For example, Schoonbaert and Grainger (2004;37 and 39 participants); Perea and Carreiras (2006;33 participants); Duñabeitia, Perea, and Carreiras (2007;36, 38, and 32 participants); Lupker et al. (2008, 52 and 78 participants); and Velan and Frost (2009;51, 80, and 84 participants). We designed our experiments to be in the upper end of this range (60, 81, 75, 80, and 80 participants), and consistent with the Hebrew work of Velan and Frost (2009). ...
Substantial research across Indo-European languages suggests that readers display a degree of uncertainty in letter position coding. For example, readers perceive transposed-letter stimuli, such as jugde, as similar to their base words (e.g., judge). However, tolerance to disruptions of letter order is not apparent in all languages, suggesting that critical aspects of the writing system may shape the nature of position coding. We investigated readers' tolerance to these disruptions in Korean, a writing system characterized by a high degree of orthographic confusability. Results of three Korean masked priming experiments revealed robust identity priming effects, but no indication of priming due to shared letters or syllables in different positions. Two further masked priming experiments revealed where the Korean findings deviate from English. These results support the claim that the nature of the writing system influences the precision of orthographic representations used in reading.
... One useful method for investigating the effect of morphological structure on word recognition is the priming paradigm, where the presentation of a morphologically related word (e.g., scanner) facilitates the identification speed and accuracy of the target word (e.g., scan). This facilitation is considered evidence for readers' sensitivity to morphological structure during visual word recognition (Beyersmann, Iakimova, Ziegler, & Colé, 2014;Quémart, Casalis, & Colé, 2011), regarding various languages such as Dutch (Diependaele, Sandra, & Grainger, 2009), English (Marslen-Wilson, Bozic, & Randall, 2008, Italian (Burani, Marcolini, De Luca, & Zoccolotti, 2008), and Spanish (Duñabeitia, Perea, & Carreiras, 2007). ...
Despite an increase in studies investigating morphological knowledge in dyslexia, the connection between morphological and semantic knowledge is still unclear. This study investigated the effect of semantic information on the performance of Hebrew-speaking, high-achieving adults with and without dyslexia in two auditory tasks: a primed-lexical decision task and a morphological awareness tasks. We manipulated the level of semantic relatedness between stimuli and targets and assessed participants’ accuracy and response times. Finding from the first tasks indicate that although semantic information assisted both groups in increasing accuracy, it resulted in a reduction of response time only for the dyslexic participants. Findings from the second task indicate that although typically developing adults did not present any accuracy difference between the conditions, in the dyslexic group, accuracy was higher when primes and targets were semantically related. Overall, the present study suggests that dyslexics are assisted by semantics when processing morphologically complex words.
... Although derivational morphemes affect meaning, while inflectional morphemes affect syntax, both are highly productive and are stacked at the end of the stem, leading to the formation of long, morphologically complex words. These characteristics have led to particular interest in morphological processing in this language (e.g., Duñabeitia, Laka, Perea, & Carreiras, 2009;Duñabeitia, Perea, & Carreiras, 2007), and evidence suggests that morpheme internalisation is attained very early during reading development (Acha, Laka, & Perea, 2010). Importantly for this study, Basque, similar to Spanish or Italian, has a shallow orthography, thus eliminating the confounding factor of orthographic depth in the modulation of grain size. ...
We investigated whether the link between visual attention span and reading is modulated by the presence of morphemes. Second and fourth grade children, with Basque as their first language, named morphologically complex and simple words and pseudowords, and performed a task measuring visual attention span. The influence of visual attention span skills on reading was modulated by the presence of morphemes in naming speed measures. In addition, fourth grade children with a larger visual attention span showed larger lexicality effects (pseudoword-word reading times) only for morphologically simple stimuli. Results are interpreted as support for the notion that both transparency and morphological complexity are important factors modulating the impact of visual attention span skills on reading.
Keywords: morphological processing, reading development, visual attention span
... Por outro lado, os vários estudos existentes nos adultos (e.g. Rastle, Davis, & New, 2004;Laudana, Badecker e Caramazza, 1989;Duñabeitia, Perea, & Carreiras, 2007) são realizados com paradigmas semelhantes ao utilizado por nós, no entanto, as proximidades morfológicas encontram-se ao nível da base e não ao nível do sufixo. Por exemplo no estudo de Rastle, Davis, & New (2004) foi utilizado também um paradigma de priming morfológico com decisão lexical onde os autores compararam pares morfologicamente relacionados (golden -gold) ou pares com pseudo-palavras em que a sobreposição ocorria nos limites da base (mother-moth) com palavras sem relação morfológica (sinach-spin). ...
Using a masked priming paradigm we investigated the effect of a derived word prime on the recognition of a target in 3 conditions: Morphological Related Words, Ortographically Overlap Words and Unrelated Words. We tested Portuguese children in the 4th grade (N=27) and college students (N=36), using a lexical decision task. The subjects saw the rime for 50 ms. Results show differences in the word processing, both for children and adults. This indicate that morphological information exert effects in the early stages of word processing.
... Por outro lado, os vários estudos existentes nos adultos (e.g. Rastle, Davis, & New, 2004;Laudana, Badecker e Caramazza, 1989;Duñabeitia, Perea, & Carreiras, 2007) são realizados com paradigmas semelhantes ao utilizado por nós, no entanto, as proximidades morfológicas encontram-se ao nível da base e não ao nível do sufixo. Por exemplo no estudo de Rastle, Davis, & New (2004) foi utilizado também um paradigma de priming morfológico com decisão lexical onde os autores compararam pares morfologicamente relacionados (golden -gold) ou pares com pseudo-palavras em que a sobreposição ocorria nos limites da base (mother-moth) com palavras sem relação morfológica (sinach-spin). ...
Embedded morphemes are thought to become available during the processing of multi-morphemic words, and impact access to the whole word. According to the edge-aligned embedded word activation theory Grainger & Beyersmann, (2017), embedded morphemes receive activation when the whole word can be decomposed into constituent morphemes. Thus, interfering with morphological decomposition also interferes with access to the embedded morphemes. Numerous studies have examined the effects of interfering with boundary and constituent-internal letters on morphological decomposition by comparing the effect of transposing letters at the morphemic boundary to constituent-internal letters. These studies, which report inconsistent findings, have typically used derived multi-morphemic words (e.g., cleaner), and sometimes use a control replacement letter condition that is not matched to the transposed letter conditions in terms of location. Across five experiments, we test the edge-aligned activation theory by examining the effects of replacing and transposing boundary and constituent-internal letters of compounds. Our findings suggest that replacing boundary letters interferes with access to both embedded constituents, while replacing constituent-internal letters still allows for access to the unaltered constituent, thus compensating for the interference in the altered constituent. Our findings are consistent with the edge-aligned theory with respect to letter replacement, and also imply that letter replacement must match the position of letter transposition when it is used as a control condition.
The morphological structure of complex words impacts how they are processed during visual word recognition. This impact varies over the course of reading acquisition and for different languages and writing systems. Many theories of morphological processing rely on a decomposition mechanism, in which words are decomposed into explicit representations of their constituent morphemes. In distributed accounts, in contrast, morphological sensitivity arises from the tuning of finer-grained representations to useful statistical regularities in the form-to-meaning mapping, without the need for explicit morpheme representations. In this theoretically guided review, we summarize research into the mechanisms of morphological processing, and discuss findings within the context of decomposition and distributed accounts. Although many findings fit within a decomposition model of morphological processing, we suggest that the full range of results is more naturally explained by a distributed approach, and discuss additional benefits of adopting this perspective.
This paper first describes the prefixation and circumfixation processes of Mirandese word formation and determines the general conditions of phonotactic correspondence between Portuguese and Mirandese. It then analyses the permeability of Mirandese to Portuguese in word formation, specifically concerning these affixation processes, and goes on to identify the specific phonological conditions that concern the allomorphy of each affix while quantifying their morphotactic transparency. Using Natural Morphology as a framework, data from this analysis demonstrate a relationship between morphotactic transparency and the actualisation of either specific allomorphic conditions or the general conditions of phonotactic correspondence.
This paper first describes the prefixation and circumfixation processes of Mirandese word formation and determines the general conditions of phonotactic correspondence between Portuguese and Mirandese. It then analyses the permeability of Mirandese to Portuguese in word formation, specifically concerning these affixation processes, and goes on to identify the specific phonological conditions that concern the allomorphy of each affix while quantifying their morphotactic transparency. Using Natural Morphology as a framework, data from this analysis demonstrate a relationship between morphotactic transparency and the actualisation of either specific allomorphic conditions or the general conditions of phonotactic correspondence.
We conducted three eye movement experiments to investigate the mechanism for coding letter positions in a person’s second language during sentence reading; we also examined the role of morphology in this process with more rigorous manipulation. Given that readers not only obtain information from currently fixated words (i.e., the foveal area) but also from upcoming words (i.e., the parafoveal area) to guide their reading, we examined both when the targets were fixated (Exp. 1) and when the targets were seen parafoveally (Exp. 2 and Exp. 3). First, we found the classic transposed letter (TL) effect in Exp. 1, but not in Exp. 2 or Exp. 3. This implies that flexible letter position coding exists during sentence reading. However, this was limited to words located in the foveal area, suggesting that L2 readers whose L2 proficiency is not as high as skilled native readers are not able to extract and utilize the parafoveal letter identity and position information of a word, whether the word length is long (Exp. 2) or short (Exp. 3). Second, we found morphological information to influence the magnitude of the TL effect in Exp. 1. These results provide new eye movement evidence for the flexibility of L2 letter position coding during sentence reading, as well as the interactions between the different internal representations of words in this process. Altogether, this is helpful for understanding L2 sentence reading and visual word recognition. Thus, future L2 reading frameworks should integrate word recognition and eye movement control models.
This study examined the processing of derivational morphology and its association with early phonological skills of 24 Dutch‐speaking children with dyslexia and 46 controls matched for age. A masked priming experiment was conducted where the semantic overlap between morphologically related pairs was manipulated as part of a lexical decision task. Results suggest that morphological processing is intact in children with dyslexia when compared to age‐matched controls. Significant priming effects were found in each group. Children with dyslexia were found to solely benefit from the morpho‐semantic information, while the morpho‐orthographic form the properties of morphemes‐influenced controls. Due to the longitudinal nature of the data set, an examination of early phonological awareness’s role in the later development of morphological processing skills was possible. In line with the psycholinguistic grain‐size theory, fifth‐grade morphological processing in children with dyslexia was found to be negatively correlated to earlier second‐grade PA skills. A similar relation was not found among the controls. Results indicate a potential shift in the cognitive processes involved during reading to compensate for the observed phonological deficits of children with dyslexia.
Surface frequency and proficiency modulate visual morphological processing in second language (L2) learners, but less is known about auditory morphological processing. Moreover, working memory affects morphosyntactic processing, but it is unclear whether it also modulates word structure processing. In the present study, Spanish monolinguals and beginner and advanced L2 learners of Spanish completed an auditory lexical decision task in Spanish containing verbs varying in morphological complexity, an individual lexical frequency task, and a working memory task. Beginner L2 learners needed more time to process infrequent morphologically complex words, but monolinguals and advanced L2 learners were unaffected by morphological complexity or surface frequency. Also, working memory (WM) did not modulate morphological processing. Taken together, the findings suggest a dual-route mechanism at initial stages of L2 acquisition and a whole-word route for Spanish monolinguals and advanced L2 learners. The findings also support the extension of dual-route models to L2 populations and suggest that the selection of a morphological processing route results from linguistic rather than cognitive reasons.
The goal of the paper was to investigate whether morphological units – stems and suffixes – influence orthographic processing by modulating visual attention demands to the task. Orthographic processing was measured with a visual one-back task requiring letters to be detected within pseudowords not including stems/suffixes, or containing real stems or real suffixes. Fourth grade children (between 9.5 and 10.5 years old) who read in a transparent orthography of a morphologically rich and agglutinative language (Basque) were tested. The results showed that the presence of morphemes in the strings did not improve letter detection performance though it slightly modulated the distribution of visual attention, showing a bias toward the processing of central letters in the presence of a stem. We suggest that the presence of highly regular and recurrent structures prioritizes stem identification, which when achieved, reduces visual attention deployment across the remaining letters.
Much of the recent masked nonword priming literature demonstrates no difference in priming between affixed and non-affixed nonword primes (e.g., maskity-MASK vs. maskond-MASK). A possible explanation for the absence of a difference is that studies have used affixed primes which were semantically uninterpretable. Therefore, this explanation indicates semantic interpretability plays a fundamental role in masked priming. To test this account, we conducted an experiment using the masked priming paradigm in the lexical decision task. We compared responses with targets which were preceded by one of four primes types: (1) interpretable affixed nonwords (e.g., maskless-MASK), (2) uninterpretable affixed nonwords (e.g., maskity-MASK), (3) non-affixed nonwords (e.g., maskond-MASK), and (4) unrelated words (e.g., tubeful-MASK). Our results follow the trend of finding no difference between affixed and non-affixed primes. Critically, however, we observed no difference in priming between uninterpretable and interpretable affixed primes. Thus, our results suggest that semantic interpretability does not influence masked priming.
Psycholinguists are interested in how words are stored in human memory. The question as to whether words are stored as single root words or whether they are stored along with the affixes still remains a controversial issue. Aitchison (1987) believes that each word has a separate entry. Mackay (1978) and Taft (1981) hold that words are made of constituent morphemes. When we listen, we decompose the morphemes and when we speak, we combine them to make multimorphemic words. The decomposition view claims that only the root is stored in memory. To test this claim, a group of 50 intermediate level students at the preparatory department of a state university situated on the western coast of Turkey were selected. They were taught 10 pseudo root nouns and verbs and 10 psuedo complex nouns and verbs. To see how the morphological complexity affected lexical access and which type of words were better remembered, they were tested on these words. Then the same group was given 10 root and 10 complex words in their mother tongue and their answer times were compared. Students recalled the root words more easily and accurately.The results shed light on the validity of the decomposition theory, showcasing we remember the words in roots better.
The relative sequence of morphological decomposition and whole-word recognition during morphologically complex word (MCW) processing has attracted much attention in recent years. However, most studies have only focused on inflected and derived words while disregarding compound words, and have mainly examined the differences between native speakers and L2 learners without addressing language proficiency levels. This paper investigates the language proficiency effect on L2 English learners’ processing of all the three types of MCWs in a masked transposed letter priming paradigm. Results showed that the high proficiency learners adhered to the Post-lexical Model in general, while the low proficiency learners presented a blurred tendency due to their poor whole-word memory and overall processing efficiency. Different morphological types caused gradable priming effects with compounds on the top of the continuum. In sum, language proficiency as well as morphological types impacts L2 learners’ MCW processing mechanisms.
Cambridge Core - Latin American Studies - The Cambridge Handbook of Spanish Linguistics - edited by Kimberly L. Geeslin
The Cambridge Handbook of Spanish Linguistics - edited by Kimberly L. Geeslin August 2018
Evidence from visual word recognition has shown that the root morpheme plays a particularly important role in recognition of nouns in templatic languages [e.g., Velan & Frost, 2009 (Hebrew), Perea, abu Mallouh, & Carreiras, 2010 (Arabic)]. Letter transposition studies in masked priming have proved a useful tool for investigating letter flexibility in the visual domain. Due to the linear nature of the auditory signal, such manipulation is not possible for spoken words. In this study, we use a novel application of the phonemic restoration paradigm to explore the role of morphology in auditory word recognition. In two separate experiments, we show that in auditory word recognition the root plays an important role in Hebrew noun recognition, with words with masked root sounds being especially difficult to recover. This study provides additional evidence in favor of the privileged role of the root in Semitic lexical access and its function in morphological decomposition.
Communication via written words is one of humanity's greatest inventions and plays a critical role in modern society. This chapter outlines the key cognitive, neural, and computational aspects of the reading system. In so doing, it shows how reading takes advantage of domain‐general processing abilities and bootstraps written communication from other neurocomputational systems, including vision and spoken language processing. It also explains how failure in different parts of the reading system can lead to reading disorders such as dyslexia. Furthermore, emerging trends reveal exciting new directions for reading research, including advancing the understanding of how the brain changes as a function of learning to read, how the brain adapts to process different languages, and how to formalize our understanding of reading in more biologically plausible models. This chapter thus outlines how an interdisciplinary perspective to understanding reading has and will continue to advance our understanding of reading in ways that are critical for both fundamental and applied aims.
This study examined the processing of derivational morphology and its association with measures of morphological awareness and literacy outcomes in 30 Dutch-speaking high-functioning dyslexics, and 30 controls, matched for age and reading comprehension. A masked priming experiment was conducted where the semantic overlap between morphologically related pairs was manipulated as part of a lexical decision task. Measures of morphological awareness were assessed using a specifically designed sentence completion task. Significant priming effects were found in each group, yet adults with dyslexia were found to benefit more from the morphological structure than the controls. Adults with dyslexia were found to be influenced by both form (morpho-orthographic) and meaning (morphosemantic) properties of morphemes while controls were mainly influenced by morphosemantic properties. The reports suggest that morphological processing is intact in high-functioning dyslexics and a strength when compared to controls matched for reading comprehension and age. Thus, reports support morphological processing as a potential factor in the reading compensation of adults with dyslexia. However, adults with dyslexia performed significantly worse than controls on morphological awareness measures.
Despite intensive study of morphological effects using various on-line techniques such as masked priming, psycholinguistic accounts of morphological processing have not yet managed to grasp the complexity of the various kinds of relationships between words. We focus on three issues related to aspects of processing that have not been given much importance but can considerably influence the effects we observe. The first issue to be dealt with is the role of frequency of the lexical items used and particularly the role of prime-target relative frequency. Second, ‘morphological’ effects with nonwords (e.g. sportation –sport), which are very often interpreted as if the status of possible word did not exist. Finally, the role of a novel variable, pseudo-family size, reflecting the influence of formally related but morphologically unrelated word forms, providing evidence for interference/competition during the early stages of morphological processing. These factors suggest that the complex set of activation/inhibition related to the lexical environment of the word-to-be-identified should be taken into account, and that morphological processing models should try to introduce factors related to the paradigmatic structure of language.
We report four experiments investigating the effects of repeated and transposed letters in orthographic processing. Orthographically related primes were formed by removing one letter from the target word, by transposing two adjacent letters, or by replacing two adjacent letters with different letters. Robust masked priming in a lexical decision task was found for primes formed by removing a single letter (e.g., mircle-MIRACLE), and this was not influenced by whether or not the prime contained a letter repetition (e.g., balace vs. balnce as a prime for BALANCE ). Target words containing a repeated letter tended to be harder to respond to than words without a letter repetition, but the nonwords formed by removing a repeated letter (e.g., BALNCE) were no harder to reject than nonwords formed by removing a non-repeated letter (e.g., MIRCLE, BALACE). Significant transposition priming effects were found for 7-letter words (e.g., sevrice- SERVICE), and these priming effects did not vary as a function of the position of the transposition (initial, final, or inner letter pair). Priming effects disappeared when primes were formed by replacing the two transposed letters with different letters (e.g., sedlice-SERVICE), and five- letter words only showed priming effects with inner letter transpositions (e.g.,
Some theories of visual word recognition postulate that there is a level of processing or representation at which morphemes are treated differently fromwhole words. Support for these theories has been derived frompriming experiments in which the recognition of a target word is facilitated by the prior presentation of a morphologically related prime (departure-DEPART). In English, such facilitation could be due to morphological relatedness, or to some combination of the orthographic and semantic relatedness characteristic of derivationally related words. We report two sets of visual priming experiments in which the morphological, semantic, and orthographic relationships between primes and targets are varied in three SOA conditions (43 ms, 72 ms, and 230 ms). Results showed that morphological structure plays a significant role in the early visual recognitionof English words that is independent of both semantic and orthographic relatedness. Findings are discussed in terms of current approaches to morphological processing.
A description is given of the main experiments that have been taken as support for the view that, in reading, a prefixed word is stripped of its prefix and lexically accessed on the basis of its stem. Since one of the most important of those experiments had been poorly executed, a new version of the same study is presented with results that are entirely consistent with the previous one. However, logical problems exist with the view that says that stems act as access codes used to gain access to the lexicon, the main ones having to do with the fact that a prefix store is required. As a result, an alternative model is favoured, namely, an interactive-activation model. Prefixed words are represented in decomposed form in this model, but no prelexical prefix-stripping is required. A detailed examination is made of the manner in which this framework is able to incorporate the previous empirical results, as well as other aspects of morphological processing.
Semantic transparency is a crucial factor in the processing of morphologically complex words, but seems to have a different impact depending on experimental conditions and languages. In English, semantic transparency is necessary to produce morphological priming in cross-modal priming, but not as clearly so in masked priming. The available reports of priming effects for opaque prime-target pairs are not as clear-cut as to rule out an explanation in terms of orthographic overlap. Experiment 1 was set out to clarify that issue in French. The novel notion of “pseudo-derivation” we introduce proved useful to show that surface morphology alone can produce priming effects in masked priming. In contrast, pure orthographic overlap produces marginal inhibition. Experiment 2 used auditory-visual cross-modal priming and showed that only semantically transparent words facilitate the recognition of their base.
Investigated the lexical entry for morphologically complex words in English. Six experiments, using a cross-modal repetition priming task, asked whether the lexical entry for derivationally suffixed and prefixed words is morphologically structured and how this relates to the semantic and phonological transparency of the surface relationship between stem and affix. There was clear evidence for morphological decomposition of semantically transparent forms. This was independent of phonological transparency, suggesting that morphemic representations are phonologically abstract. Semantically opaque forms, in contrast, behave like monomorphemic words. Overall, suffixed and prefixed derived words and their stems prime each other through shared morphemes in the lexical entry, except for pairs of suffixed forms, which show a cohort-based interference effect. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
the present studies used feature integration errors to examine the perceptual groupings of letters in visual word recognition (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Effects of morphologically related primes were examined in two masked prime experiments. Responses to both free root and derived
suffixed word targets were facilitated when primes were derived suffixed words containing the target’s root, and this facilitation
effect showed a time course similar to that for the facilitation effect of repetition primes (though systematically smaller
in magnitude). In a control experiment only the longest prime duration of Experiment 1 was used; responses to derived suffixed
word targets were facilitated by both free root primes and derived suffixed word primes sharing the target’s root (relative
to unrelated and form-related control primes). The free root and derived suffixed word prime conditions did not differ significantly.
In Experiment 2, only true derived word primes produced facilitation, whereas morphologically simple primes containing a pseudoroot
did not influence performance relative to the unrelated prime condition. We argue that this supports a supralexical account
of morphological representation.
The role of morphological structure in word recognition was studied in two experiments using a lexical decision task. In Experiment 1, RTs to affixed derived words of medium and low surface frequency were studied as a function of their cumulative root frequency. Results show that cumulative root frequency determines the latencies to suffixed words but not to prefixed words. In Experiment 2, it was shown that RTs to derived suffixed words belonging to the same morphological family (i.e., words sharing a same root) vary as a function of their relative whole word frequency. The asymmetry in the role of cumulative root frequency for prefixed and suffixed words is interpreted with reference to the different sequential morphological organization of these two types of words (Affix + Root) versus (Root + Affix). It is proposed that only suffixed words are accessed via the root. In the recognition of these words access to the root implies access to the corresponding morphological family. The members of the family are then examined in a frequency-ordered search.
Describes a model in which perception results from excitatory and
inhibitory interactions of detectors for visual features, letters,
and words. A visual input excites detectors for visual features in
the display and for letters consistent with the active features.
Letter detectors in turn excite detectors for consistent words. It
is suggested that active word detectors mutually inhibit each other
and send feedback to the letter level, strengthening activation and
hence perceptibility of their constituent letters. Computer simulation
of the model exhibits the perceptual advantage for letters in words
over unrelated contexts and is considered consistent with basic facts
about word advantage. Most important, the model produces facilitation
for letters in pronounceable pseudowords as well as words. Pseudowords
activate detectors for words that are consistent with most active
letters, and feedback from the activated words strengthens activations
of the letters in the pseudoword. The model thus accounts for apparently
rule-governed performance without any actual rules. (50 ref) (PsycINFO
Database Record (c) 2007 APA, all rights reserved)
We describe a Windows program that enables users to obtain a broad range of statistics concerning the properties of word and nonword stimuli in an agglutinative language (Basque), including measures of word frequency (at the whole-word and lemma levels), bigram and biphone frequency, orthographic similarity, orthographic and phonological structure, and syllable-based measures. It is designed for use by researchers in psycholinguistics, particularly those concerned with recognition of isolated words and morphology. In addition to providing standard orthographic and phonological neighborhood measures, the program can be used to obtain information about other forms of orthographic similarity, such as transposed-letter similarity and embedded-word similarity. It is available free of charge from www .uv.es/mperea/E-Hitz.zip.
Recent research has shown that letter identity and letter position are not integral perceptual dimensions (e.g., jugde primes judge in word-recognition experiments). Most comprehensive computational models of visual word recognition (e.g., the interactive activation model, J. L. McClelland & D. E. Rumelhart, 1981, and its successors) assume that the position of each letter within a word is perfectly encoded. Thus, these models are unable to explain the presence of effects of letter transposition (trial-trail), letter migration (beard-bread), repeated letters (moose-mouse), or subset/superset effects (faulty-faculty). The authors extend R. Ratcliff's (1981) theory of order relations for encoding of letter positions and show that the model can successfully deal with these effects. The basic assumption is that letters in the visual stimulus have distributions over positions so that the representation of one letter will extend into adjacent letter positions. To test the model, the authors conducted a series of forced-choice perceptual identification experiments. The overlap model produced very good fits to the empirical data, and even a simplified 2-parameter model was capable of producing fits for 104 observed data points with a correlation coefficient of .91.
Counterbalanced designs are ubiquitous in cognitive psychology. Researchers, however, rarely perform optimal analyses of these designs and, as a result, reduce the power of their experiments. In the context of a simple priming experiment, several idealized data sets are used to illustrate the possible costs of ignoring counterbalancing, and recommendations are made for more appropriate analyses. These recommendations apply to assessment of both reliability of effects over subjects and reliability of effects over stimulus items.
A model of orthographic processing is described that postulates read-out from different information dimensions, determined by variable response criteria set on these dimensions. Performance in a perceptual identification task is simulated as the percentage of trials on which a noisy criterion set on the dimension of single word detector activity is reached. Two additional criteria set on the dimensions of total lexical activity and time from stimulus onset are hypothesized to be operational in the lexical decision task. These additional criteria flexibly adjust to changes in stimulus material and task demands, thus accounting for strategic influences on performance in this task. The model unifies results obtained in response-limited and data-limited paradigms and helps resolve a number of inconsistencies in the experimental literature that cannot be accommodated by other current models of visual word recognition.
The segmentation and word discovery problem arises because speech does not contain any reliable acoustic analog of the blank spaces between words of printed English. As a result, children must segment the utterances they hear in order to discover the sound patterns of individual words in their language. A number of computational models have been proposed to explain how children segment speech and discover words, including ten new models in the last five years. This paper reviews all proposed models and organizes them according to their fundamental segmentation strategies, their processing characteristics, and the ways in which they use memory. All proposed models are found to use one of three fundamental strategies: the utterance-boundary strategy, the predictability strategy, or the word-recognition strategy. Selected predictions of the models are explained, their performance in computer simulations is summarized, and behavioral evidence bearing on them is discussed. Finally, ideas about how these diverse models might be synthesized into one comprehensive model are offered.
This article describes the Dual Route Cascaded (DRC) model, a computational model of visual word recognition and reading aloud. The DRC is a computational realization of the dual-route theory of reading, and is the only computational model of reading that can perform the 2 tasks most commonly used to study reading: lexical decision and reading aloud. For both tasks, the authors show that a wide variety of variables that influence human latencies influence the DRC model's latencies in exactly the same way. The DRC model simulates a number of such effects that other computational models of reading do not, but there appear to be no effects that any other current computational model of reading can simulate but that the DRC model cannot. The authors conclude that the DRC model is the most successful of the existing computational models of reading.
DMDX is a Windows-based program designed primarily for language-processing experiments. It uses the features of Pentium class CPUs and the library routines provided in DirectX to provide accurate timing and synchronization of visual and audio output. A brief overview of the design of the program is provided, together with the results of tests of the accuracy of timing. The Web site for downloading the software is given, but the source code is not available.
Much research suggests that words comprising more than one morpheme are represented in a "decomposed" manner in the visual word recognition system. In the research presented here, we investigate what information is used to segment a word into its morphemic constituents and, in particular, whether semantic information plays a role in that segmentation. Participants made visual lexical decisions to stem targets preceded by masked primes sharing (1) a semantically transparent morphological relationship with the target (e.g., cleaner-CLEAN), (2) an apparent morphological relationship but no semantic relationship with the target (e.g., corner-CORN), and (3) a nonmorphological form relationship with the target (e.g., brothel-BROTH). Results showed significant and equivalent masked priming effects in cases in which primes and targets appeared to be morphologically related, and priming in these conditions could be distinguished from nonmorphological form priming. We argue that these findings suggest a level of representation at which apparently complex words are decomposed on the basis of their morpho-orthographic properties. Implications of these findings for computational models of reading are discussed.
Three masked-prime naming experiments were conducted to examine the impact of morpheme boundaries on letter transposition confusability effects. In Experiment 1, the priming effects of primes containing letter transpositions within (sunhsine) and transpositions across (susnhine) the constituents of compound words were compared with correctly spelled primes and primes containing letter substitutions in naming correctly spelled targets. Primes containing transpositions within morphemes facilitated naming as much as correctly spelled primes. Primes with transpositions across morphemes did not facilitate naming more than primes with letter substitutions. Experiment 2 replicated Experiment 1 and extended the effects to so-called pseudocompounds (mayhem). Experiment 3 extended the results to agentive derivational morphology (boaster). The results are discussed in the context of visual word recognition.
A series of primed visual lexical decision experiments tested affix priming effects on the recognition of derivationally affixed targets at three different prime exposure durations (43, 57 and 115 ms) with forward masking of the prime. Effects of prime words sharing the same affix as targets were measured against pseudo-affixed primes and unrelated morphologically simple primes. Robust effects of prefixed primes were observed relative to both pseudo-prefixed and unrelated control primes, while suffixed primes systematically produced non-significant effects. Possible interpretations of this marked asymmetry in masked affix priming are considered. © 2003 by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, D-10785 Berlin. All rights reserved.
The authors investigated the lexical entry for morphologically complex words in English, Six experiments , using a cross-modal repetition priming task, asked whether the lexical entry for derivation-ally suffixed and prefixed words is morphologically structured and how this relates to the semantic and phonological transparency of the surface relationship between stem and affix. There was clear evidence for morphological decomposition of semantically transparent forms. This was independent of phonological transparency, suggesting that morphemic representations are phonologically abstract. Semantically opaque forms, in contrast, behave like monomorphemic words. Overall, suffixed and prefixed derived words and their stems prime each other through shared morphemes in the lexical entry, except for pairs of suffixed forms, which show a cohort-based interference effect.
We report four experiments investigating the effects of repeated and transposed letters in orthographic processing. Orthographically related primes were formed by removing one letter from the target word, by transposing two adjacent letters, or by replacing two adjacent letters with different letters. Robust masked priming in a lexical decision task was found for primes formed by removing a single letter (e.g., mircle-MIRACLE), and this was not influenced by whether or not the prime contained a letter repetition (e.g., balace vs. balnce as a prime for BALANCE ). Target words containing a repeated letter tended to be harder to respond to than words without a letter repetition, but the nonwords formed by removing a repeated letter (e.g., BALNCE) were no harder to reject than nonwords formed by removing a non-repeated letter (e.g., MIRCLE, BALACE). Significant transposition priming effects were found for 7-letter words (e.g., sevriceSERVICE), and these priming effects did not vary as a function of the position of the transposition (initial, final, or inner letter pair). Priming effects disappeared when primes were formed by replacing the two transposed letters with different letters (e.g., sedlice-SERVICE), and fiveletter words only showed priming effects with inner letter transpositions (e.g.,
The ability to read is supported by the existence of codes that represent the orthographic, phonological, and semantic properties of words. This thesis addresses the issue of how orthographic codes are self-organised. This question is explored using a combination of theoretical and computational approaches, leading to the introduction of a new computational model of Visual word recognition. The thesis begins with a review and critique of existing models of visual word recognition, with particular reference to their inability to satisfy adaptive constraints. This analysis highlights the inability of current models to explain self-organisation processes or to operate in real-world input environments. Subsequent chapters review neural networks for pattern recognition, learning and working memory, focussing on the work of Grossberg and colleagues. Two specific networks-the masking field network and its extension, the SONNET network-exhibit adaptive properties that are lacking in current models of visual word recognition. The SOLAR (Self-Organising Lexical Acquisition and Recognition) model is a new neural network model of visual word recognition that embodies self-organisation and masking principles. The model differs from previous models in its capacity for stable self-organisation, its spatial coding scheme, its combination of serial and parallel processes, and its chunking mechanism. The model also introduces a novel mechanism to explain word frequency effects. Another distinctive feature of the model is its incorporation of a novel opponent processing mechanism for performing lexical decision. The SOLAR model explains a broad range of empirical data, including frequency effects, the lexical status effect, length effects, facilitatory and inhibitory effects of orthographic Similarity, the pseudohomophone effect, masked and unmasked repetition priming effects, the frequency attenuation effect, and left-to-right processing effects. Simulations have also demonstrated the model's ability to recognise complex stimuli (e.g., polysyllabic words) via a chunking mechanism that implements segmentation-through-recognition. This poses a critical challenge to alternative computational models, which are restricted to processing monosyllabic words. The SOLAR model also generates a number of novel empirical predictions. The final chapter discusses how the model might be extended to incorporate phonological codes, and the implications for explaining reading performance in skilled and dyslexic readers. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
This research studied the role of surface and cumulative word frequency in the processing and representation of morphologically complex suffixed words. Experiment 1 showed that auditory lexical decision times to suffixed words were influenced by their surface frequency. Experiments 2 and 3 showed a cumulative root frequency effect for high- and low-surface-frequency suffixed words. Experiment 4 demonstrated that lexical decision times for these words varied as a function of their position in their morphological family. These results support a view whereby suffixed words belonging to a given morphological family share the same lexical entry. Within a lexical entry, suffixed words belonging to the same family are organized on the basis of their surface frequency and compete with one another.
Nonwords created by transposing two adjacent letters (i.e., transposed-letter (TL) nonwords like jugde) are very effective at activating the lexical representation of their base words. This fact poses problems for most computational models of word recognition (e.g., the interactive-activation model and its extensions), which assume that exact letter positions are rapidly coded during the word recognition process. To examine the scope of TL similarity effects further, we asked whether TL similarity effects occur for nonwords created by exchanging two nonadjacent letters (e.g., caniso-CASINO) in three masked form priming experiments using the lexical decision task. The two nonadjacent transposed letters were consonants in Experiment 1 (e.g., caniso-CASINO), vowels in Experiment 2 (anamil-ANIMAL) and both consonants and vowels in Experiment 3. Results showed that nonadjacent TL primes produce priming effects (in comparison to orthographic controls, e.g., caviro-CASINO), however, only when the transposed letters are consonants. In a final experiment we examined latencies for nonwords created by nonadjacent transpositions of consonants versus vowels in a lexical decision task. Both types of nonwords produced longer latencies than matched controls, with consonant TL nonwords being more difficult than vowel TL nonwords. The implications of these findings for models having “position-specific” coding schemes as well as for models proposing alternative coding schemes are discussed.
Certain theories of reading assume the representation and manipulation of sublexical entities while others do not. Consistent with the latter, M. Seidenberg (1987, in Attention and performance XII: The psychology of reading. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum; 1989, in Linguistic Structure i in Language Processing. Dordrecht: Kluwer) and M. Seidenberg and J. L. McClelland (1989, Psychological Review, 96, No. 4, 523–568) have proposed that previously reported effects of syllabic and morphological structure can be best understood as resulting from the common co-occurrence of these sublexical entities and a pattern of bigram frequencies referred to as a “bigram trough.” This claim is examined using lexical decision and illusory conjunction paradigms. The reliable effects of syllabic and morphological structure that are observed cannot, however, be accounted for by the presence or absence of bigram troughs. The implications of such findings for the connectionist theory of reading proposed by M. Seidenberg and J. L. McClelland (op. cit.) are discussed.
In this study, we looked at priming effects produced by a short presentation (47 ms) of morphologically complex pseudowords in French. In Experiment 1, we used as primes semantically interpretable pseudowords made of the grammatical combination of a root and a suffix, such as rapidifier “to quickify.” In Experiment 2, we used non-morphological pseudowords such as rapiduit, where -uit is an existing ending in French, but is not a suffix. In Experiment 3, primes were pseudowords consisting of a non-interpretable combination of roots and suffixes, such as sportation, formed by the noun sport “sport” and the suffix -ation (-ation only attaches to verbs). Results of Experiment 1 show that morphologically complex pseudowords significantly facilitated the recognition of their roots. This priming effect was equivalent to the facilitation obtained when existing derived words were used as primes. In Experiment 2, no priming effect was obtained with non-morphological pseudowords, demonstrating that the mere occurrence of the target at the beginning of the pseudoword prime is not sufficient to produce any priming and that an orthographic account of the results is not viable. Finally, Experiment 3 shows that the semantic interpretability of the morphologically complex pseudowords does not affect priming, as facilitation effect is obtained with morphologically complex non-interpretable pseudowords. The results reveal an early morphological decomposition triggered by the morphological structure of the prime, but insensitive to its lexicality or interpretability.
Three experiments investigated performance for words which differ from another word only by the transposition of two letters (e.g.,salt, slat). In Experiment 1, high frequency words from transposed-letter (TL) confusable pairs were responded to more slowly than carefully matched control words in both the lexical decision and word naming task. Low frequency TL words were responded to less accurately than control words in the naming but not the lexical decision task. Experiment 2 replicated the naming data of Experiment 1 and also revealed that naming accuracy for TL word targets was reduced when they were preceded by a brief masked presentation of their confusable mate. Experiment 3 provided a third replication of the impaired naming performance for TL target words and demonstrated that the effect was insensitive to concurrent dual task demands. These TL confusability effects provide strong constraints that can contribute to evaluation and specification of current models of visual word recognition.
Transposed-letter (TL) nonwords (e.g., jugde) can be easily misperceived as words, a fact that is somewhat inconsistent with the letter-position-coding schemes employed by most current models of visual word recognition. To examine this issue further, we conducted four masked semantic/associative priming experiments, using a lexical decision task. In Experiment 1, the related primes could be words, TL-internal nonwords, or replacement-letter (RL) nonwords (e.g., judge, jugde, or judpe, respectively; the target would be COURT). Relative to an unrelated condition, masked TL-internal primes produced a significant semantic/associative priming effect, an effect that was only slightly smaller than the priming effect for word primes. No effect, however, was observed for RL-nonword primes. In Experiment 2, the TL-nonword primes were created by switching the two final letters of the primes (e.g., judeg). The results again showed a semantic/associative priming effect for word primes, but not for TL-final nonword primes or for RL-nonword primes. Experiment 3 replicated the associative/semantic priming effect for TL-internal nonword primes, with, again, no effect for TL-final nonword primes. Finally, Experiment 4 again failed to yield a priming effect for TL-final nonword primes. The implications of these results for the choice of a letter-position-coding scheme in visual word recognition models are discussed.
Nonwords created by transposing two letters (e.g., RELOVUTION) are very effective at activating the lexical representation of their base words (Perea & Lupker, 2004). In the present study, we examined whether the nature of transposed-letter (TL) similarity effects was purely orthographic or whether it could also have a phonological component. Specifically, we examined transposed-letter similarity effects for nonwords created by transposing two nonadjacent letters (e.g., relovución-REVOLUCION) in a masked form priming experiment using the lexical decision task (Experiment 1). The controls were (a) a pseudohomophone of the transposed-letter prime (relobución-REVOLUCION; note that B and V are pronounced as /b/ in Spanish) or (b) an orthographic control (relodución-REVOLUCION). Results showed a similar advantage of the TL nonword condition over the phonological and the orthographic control conditions. Experiment 2 showed a masked phonological priming effect when the letter positions in the prime were in the right order. In a third experiment, using a single-presentation lexical decision task, TL nonwords produced longer latencies than the orthographic and phonological controls, whereas there was only a small phonological effect restricted to the error data. These results suggest that TL similarity effects are orthographic--rather than phonological--in nature.
A masked priming lexical decision experiment was conducted to examine whether or not assignment of letter position in a word can be influenced by lexeme boundaries. The experiment was run in Basque, which is a strongly agglutinating language with a high proportion of inflected and compound words. Nonword primes were created by transposing two nonadjacent letters that crossed or did not cross morphological boundaries. Specifically, we compared morphologically complex prime-target pairs (e.g., arbigide-ARGIBIDE) with orthographic controls (e.g., arkipide-ARGIBIDE; note that ARGIBIDE is a compound of ARGI + BIDE) and noncompound pairs (e.g., ortakila--ORKATILA) with orthographic controls (e.g., orbahila-ORKATILA). Results showed that transposed-letter effects were virtually the same for compound and noncompound words, both when the orthographic control condition was used as a baseline and when the identity condition was used as a baseline. Thus, transposed-letter similarity effects seem to be orthographic in nature. We examine the implications of these results for the models of visual word recognition.
this article. PRINCIPLES UNDERLYING THE CONNECTIONIST APPROACH The connectionist approach instantiates a number of computational principles that are relevant to morphological processing (see Figure 2). We discuss #ve central ones in some detail because they are important for understanding the conditions under which the approach predicts morphological effects in the absence of semantic and/or phonological similarity (for additional background on principles of connectionist modelling, see Chauvin &Rumelhart, 1995; Hertz, Krogh, &Palmer, 1991; McClelland et al., 1986; Rumelhart, Hinton, & Williams, 1986a; Smolensky, Mozer, & Rumelhart, 1996)
The effects of transparency on morphological decomposition are language dependent
- M Carreiras
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Carreiras, M., Duñabeitia, J. A., & Perea, M. (submitted for publication). The eVects of transparency on
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Masked priming: State of the art (pp. 97–120)
- S J Kinoshita
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LEXESP: lexico informatizado del español
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The overlap model of the encoding of letter positions
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