Bigram Frequency, Number of Syllables and Morphemes and Their Effects on Lexical Decision and Word Naming

Abstract

There has been an increasing volume of evidence supporting the role of the syllable in word processing tasks. Recently it has also been shown that orthographic redundancy, related to the pattern of bigram frequencies, could not explain the syllable number effect on lexical decision times. This was demonstrated on a large sample of words taken from the British Lexicon Project. In this study we extend this research by examining both lexical decision and word naming times taken from the English Lexicon Project. There was a syllable number effect for both tasks in the expected direction, and this effect was independent of the presence of a bigram trough. The research also examined the role of other bigram related variables and the number of morphemes on lexical decision and word naming times. The number of morphemes had a significant effect on both word processing tasks, with words with more morphemes producing faster reaction times and also fewer errors. This pattern was reversed for nonword lexical decision times. The results are discussed in the light of recent developments in models of reading.

Lexical decision and the number of morphemes and affixes

“…The number of syllables had an inhibitory effect on lexical decision, as has been demonstrated on many occasions (Muncer & Knight, ). Muncer, Knight & Adams () have replicated this effect in a study of a larger sample of 3,358 five‐letter words. They found that the number of syllables increased the time to identify a word and that the number of morphemes reduces the time taken.…”

“…As such the results provide more support for morphological decomposition accounts of lexical decision and word naming (Beyersmann, Coltheart & Castles, ). There is now evidence from large samples of words and nonwords that more morphemes in a word make them easier and quicker to detect (Yap et al ., ; Muncer et al ., ), and that morpheme like elements such as affixes inhibit detection of nonwords.…”

“…It should also be noted that it is possible to adapt the program to include more or fewer affixes, or indeed any other word fragment, by amending the table that the program searches. This program made it possible to look at the effect of affixes on nonword detection in two very large samples of nonwords, and thus extend previous research that has shown a facilitative effect of the number of morphemes on lexical decision (Yap et al, 2011;Muncer et al, 2013). We used the program to investigate the impact of affixes on lexical decision times for nonwords taken from the ELP and the impact of affixes and the number of syllables in the BLP.…”

Universal Restrictions in Reading: What Do French Beginning Readers (Mis)perceive?

“…The letter co-occurrences that straddle syllable boundaries (e.g., the bigram NV in ANVIL) are of lower frequency than cluster co-occurrences that constitute syllable-sized units that precede or follow the syllable boundaries (e.g., AN and VI) and act as a powerful statistical cue that underlies syllable location and segmentation. However, previous research has confirmed that orthographic statistical properties do not occur in isolation (e.g., in Spanish, Conrad et al, 2009(in English, Rapp, 1992Muncer et al, 2014). For instance, in French, Doignon and Zagar (2006) and Doignon-Camus and Zagar (2014) found that, from the age of six, French children's response patterns indicated more preservation ICs than violation ICs when the orthographic and phonological boundaries matched (e.g., "BI/MIR" and "RON/TA"; the slash indicates that the orthographic boundary coincides with the phonological boundary) but that the response patterns indicated more violation ICs than preservation ICs when the orthographic and phonological boundaries mismatched (e.g., "RO/N * ER" and "BI * M/BU"; the * indicates the orthographic boundary, whereas the slash indicates the phonological boundary).…”

What can megastudies tell us about the orthographic structure of English words?

“…Empirical evidence has been reported for graphemes (written representation of phonemes, e.g., Coltheart, 1978;Marinus & de Jong, 2011;Peereman, Brand, & Rey, 2006), onset/rime units (sub-constituents of syllables, e.g., Cutler, Butterfield, & Williams, 1987;Treiman, 1986;Treiman & Chafetz, 1987), graphosyllables (written representation of syllables, e.g., Spoehr & Smith, 1973;Carreiras, Alvarez & de Vega, 1993), morphemes (e.g., Longtin, Segui, & Hallé, 2003;Muncer, Knight, & Adams, in press), and BOSS units (basic orthographic syllabic structure, corresponding to a graphosyllable plus one or more consonants, e.g., Taft, 1979;Taft, Alvarez, & Carreiras, 2007).…”