List context fosters semantic processing: Parallels between semantic and morphological facilitation when primes are forward masked.

Abstract

The authors examined patterns of facilitation under forward-masked priming conditions across 3 list contexts (Experiments 1-3) that varied with respect to properties of filler trials-(a) mixed (morphological, orthographic, semantic), (b) identity, and (c) semantic-but held the relatedness proportion constant (75%). Facilitation for targets that were related morphologically to their prime occurred regardless of filler context, but facilitation for semantically related pairs occurred only in the context of identity and semantic fillers. Facilitation was absent for orthographically similar prime-target pairs in all 3 filler contexts when matching numbers of orthographically similar wordword and word-nonword prime-target pairs rendered orthographic similarity uninformative with respect to lexicality of the target. Enhanced semantic and morphological facilitation in the context of identity and semantic relative to mixed fillers support a semantically attuned, as contrasted with a purely form-based, account of early morphological processing. Keywordsforward-masked primes; semantic priming; morphological priming; prime validity; prime recruitment When primes are forward masked and appear for durations on the order of 50 ms or less, readers generally are unaware of their presentation. Nonetheless, various dimensions of similarity between forward-masked primes and their targets differentially influence this early phase of target recognition. Typically, it is difficult to observe semantic (e.g., craft-ART) facilitation when primes are forward masked and prime durations are as short as 50 ms in the lexical decision task (Forster, Mohan, & Hector, 2003;Rastle, Davis, Marslen-Wilson, & Tyler, 2000), although some have obtained it under exceptional conditions (see Perea & Gotor, 1997). Morphological (e.g., artist-ART) facilitation, however, is robust and easy to detect (Forster & Azuma, 2000;Forster, Davis, Schoknecht, & Carter, 1987;Grainger, Colé, & Segui, 1991;Pastizzo & Feldman, 2002;Rastle et al., 2000). Effects when orthographically similar primes are forward masked (e.g., artery-ART) are inconsistent. Some have observed nonsignificant orthographic inhibition (Janack, Pastizzo, & Feldman, 2004;Pastizzo & Feldman, 2002;Pollatsek, Perea, & Binder, 1999;Sears, Hino, & Lupker, 1995), whereas others have observed facilitation (Carreiras, Perea, & Grainger, 1997;Forster & Shen, 1996;Forster & Taft, 1994 NIH-PA Author ManuscriptNIH-PA Author Manuscript NIH-PA Author Manuscript effects seem to depend on lexicality of the prime (Siakaluk, Sears, & Lupker, 2002), relative prime-target length (De Moor & Brysbaert, 2000), relative prime-target frequency (Segui & Grainger, 1990), and properties of the target's orthographic neighborhood, including number of neighbors or density (Carreiras et al., 1997;Forster et al., 1987), number of higher frequency neighbors (Perea & Lupker, 2003), and number of shared neighbors between prime and target (Davis & Lupker, 2006).One interpretation of the failure to detect semantic facilitatio...

Sharing morphemes without sharing meaning: Production and comprehension of German verbs in the context of morphological relatives.

“…This result also highlights explanations by Feldman and Basnight-Brown (2008) or Feldman et al (2009). They argue that list composition modulates semantic contributions to morphological effects in masked priming conditions.…”

“…Longtin et al (2003) replicated these results for French. These results have been challenged recently (Feldman & Basnight-Brown, 2008;Feldman, O'Connor, Moscoso del Prado Martín, 2009). Feldman et al (2008Feldman et al ( , 2009) obtained a modulation of early morphological priming by semantic transparency.…”

“…These results have been challenged recently (Feldman & Basnight-Brown, 2008;Feldman, O'Connor, Moscoso del Prado Martín, 2009). Feldman et al (2008Feldman et al ( , 2009) obtained a modulation of early morphological priming by semantic transparency. Their meta-analysis suggests that such modulation was also evident in earlier research with less priming by opaque morphologically complex items.…”

Semantic similarity influences early morphological priming in Serbian: A challenge to form-then-meaning accounts of word recognition

“…Experimental lists that contain a high proportion of identical (ID) prime-target filler trials (e.g., papir-PAPIR ) produce semantic facilitation even when primes are forward masked (Bodner & Masson, 2003). Moreover, the inclusion of form-similar word-word ID and word-nonword quasi-ID trials to create a relatedness proportion of 75% significantly boosts semantic and morphological but not orthographic facilitation (Feldman & Basnight-Brown, 2008). Therefore in the present study, as in Feldman et al (2009), we introduced many ID filler trials and concomitant listwise semantic similarity so as to maximize morphological facilitation and the potential to detect an interaction with semantic similarity.…”

Early morphological processing is morphosemantic and not simply morpho-orthographic: A violation of form-then-meaning accounts of word recognition

“…Nonetheless, when experimental lists contain a high proportion of identical (ID) prime–target filler trials (e.g., artist – artist ), semantic facilitation has been documented even when the primes are forward masked (Bodner & Masson, 2003). In fact, increasing the listwide relatedness proportion to 75% by the inclusion of form-similar word–word and word–nonword ID trials significantly boosts both semantic and morphological facilitation (Feldman & Basnight-Brown, 2008). Therefore, in the present study, we introduced many ID filler trials and concomitant listwise semantic similarity so as to maximize the evidence of morphological processing and the potential to detect an interaction with semantic transparency in the forward masked primed lexical decision task.…”