Graded Aspects of Morphological Processing: Task and Processing Time

Abstract

Effects on targets of orthographically (O) and semantically (S) related primes were compared with morphologically related (M) primes in the lexical decision, naming, and go/no go naming tasks. The overall pattern typified the graded nature of morphological processing. Morphological relatedness produced facilitation whose magnitude varied across a range of stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs of 66-300 ms) and tasks. The effect of semantic and orthographic similarity also depended on SOA and on task. Importantly, the effects of morphological relatedness and orthographic similarity diverged along a time course that reflected semantic processing but could only be approximated by the effect of semantic relatedness between prime and target.Keywords morphological facilitation; lexical decision; naming; go/no go naming; graded effects; cross task comparisons; cross SOA comparisons In a variety of languages (e.g., Serbian: 1 Feldman, 1994;Feldman, Barac-Cikoja, & Kostić, 2000; Hebrew: Bentin & Feldman, 1990; English: Feldman, 1992;Fowler, Napps, & Feldman, 1985;Fowler et al., 1985;Stanners, Neiser, Hernon, & Hall, 1979; and American Sign Language: Hanson & Feldman, 1989), and word recognition tasks, prior exposure to a word formed from a base morpheme that appears in both prime and target can facilitate processing of a target word. Facilitation due to a shared base morpheme (morphological facilitation) arises under a variety of presentation conditions. For example, morphological facilitation occurs when primes and/or targets are presented auditorily (e.g., Fowler et al., 1985; see also Emmorey, 1989;Kirsner, Milech, & Standen, 1983;Marslen-Wilson, Tyler, Waksler, & Older, 1994), when targets are preceded by primes with forward masks (e.g., Deutsch, Frost, & Forster, 1998;Forster, Davis, Schoknecht, & Carter, 1987;Frost, Forster, & Deutsch, 1997), and when prime and target are separated by a number of intervening items (Feldman, 2000;Stanners et al., 1979).Morphological facilitation depends on a priming methodology. Some researchers view priming as a tool to study the mechanisms that underlie memory and word recognition. Others emphasize the symbolic or associative knowledge structures that guide performance in recognition tasks. The latter are inclined to interpret similar patterns over various experimental © 2001 Elsevier Science (USA) All rights reserved.Address correspondence and reprint requests to Laurie Feldman, Haskins Labs, 270 Crown St., New Haven, CT 06510. lf503@albany.edu. 1 At the time of publication, we referred to this language as Serbo-Croatian. NIH Public Access Author ManuscriptBrain Lang. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2010 July 5. Published in final edited form as:Brain Lang. 2002 ; 81(1-3): 12-27. NIH-PA Author ManuscriptNIH-PA Author Manuscript NIH-PA Author Manuscript tasks as revealing about shared lexical structures that underlie performance. For example, morphological facilitation may reflect activation of a common morpheme in prime and in target. When discrepant findings arise, acc...

The developing mental lexicon: evidence from morphological priming of irregular Hebrew forms

“…Previous research found that morphological priming effects tend to be smaller in the naming task relative to effects found in the lexical decision task (Drews & Zwitscrlood, 1995;Feldman & Prostko, 2002). However, this comparison was made with adult readers whose naming responses are very fast.…”

Orthographic characteristics speed Hindi word naming but slow Urdu naming: evidence from Hindi/Urdu biliterates

“…Earlier studies in English (Feldman & Prostko, 2002;Rastle et al, 2000), French (Seguí & Grainger, 1990), and German (Drews & Zwitserlood, 1995) have consistently shown that form-priming effects dissipate at prime exposure durations exceeding 300 ms. In contrast, Experiment 1 in the present research provides clear evidence of form priming in Hindi, despite the use of relatively long prime exposures (136 and 680 ms).…”

Priming English past tense verbs: Rules or statistics?

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