On the interaction of letter transpositions and morphemic boundaries

Abstract

Investigations of the impact of morphemic boundaries on transposed-letter priming effects have yielded conflicting results. Five masked priming lexical decision experiments were conducted to examine the interaction of letter transpositions and morphemic boundaries with English suffixed derivations. Experiments 1-3 found that responses to monomorphemic target words (e.g., SPEAK) were facilitated to the same extent by morphologically related primes containing letter transpositions that did (SPEAEKR) or did not (SPEKAER) cross a morphemic boundary. This pattern was also observed in Experiments 4 and 5, in which the targets (e.g. SPEAKER) were the base forms of the transposed-letter primes. Thus, in these experiments the influence of the morphological structure of a transposed-letter prime did not depend on whether the letter transposition crossed a morphological boundary.

Revisiting letter transpositions within and across morphemic boundaries

“…3;Duñabeitia et al, 2007; see also Luke & Christianson, 2013, for additional evidence), and support a claim for the existence, at least for the most skilled readers, of an early stage of morphological decomposition that is sensitive to morpho-orthographic interactions (see also Taft & Nillsen, 2013). More importantly, the present study offers an (admittedly speculative, but suggestive) explanation for the different results that have been provided in recent studies on the same issue (see Beyersmann et al, 2013;Rueckl & Rimzhim, 2011;Sánchez-Gutiérrez & Rastle, 2013).…”

“…The authors reviewed other studies testing English participants in which the magnitudes of TL priming effects were similar in size, regardless of whether or not the transpositions crossed the morphemic boundary (e.g., Beyersmann, Coltheart, & Castles, 2012;Beyersmann, McCormick, & Rastle, 2013;Masserang & Pollatsek, 2012;Rueckl & Rimzhim, 2011). They then questioned whether the discrepancy between the data reported by Duñabeitia et al (2007) and these studies could result from an inherent difference between the languages at test.…”

Letter transpositions within and across morphemic boundaries: Is there a cross-language difference?

“…Specifically, we wished to investigate the impact of letter transpositions when they arise within morphemes or across morpheme boundaries. This is an issue that has seen considerable controversy in recent years, with some studies reporting a reduction in the transposed-letter benefit when letter transpositions arise across morpheme boundaries (e.g., Duñabeitia et al, 2007), and others reporting no difference in the magnitudes of the transposed-letter benefit as a function of the position of the transposed letter (e.g., Beyersmann et al, 2012;Beyersmann et al, 2013;Rueckl & Rimzhim, 2011). Critically, Duñabeitia et al conducted their most compelling study in Spanish, while the other statistically reliable studies have used English stimuli, leading to speculation that there might be a cross-linguistic difference in orthographic coding (Beyersmann et al, 2012).…”

“…However, subsequent investigations in English have failed to replicate these findings (Beyersmann, Coltheart, & Castles, 2012;Beyersmann, McCormick, & Rastle, 2013;Rueckl & Rimzhim, 2011). In particular, Rueckl and Rimzhim reported five masked-priming experiments in which they demonstrated persuasively that (a) the processing of a target word is facilitated by the prior presentation of a masked prime with two letters transposed; (b) this facilitation is observed even in cases in which the transposed letters straddle a morpheme boundary; and (c) this facilitation is equivalent when the transposed letters arise within a stem or across a morpheme boundary.…”

“…Duñabeitia et al, 2007;Rueckl & Rimzhim, 2011), our prediction was that the transposed-letter benefit should be apparent for both language groups when the letter transposition arises within a morpheme, but should vanish for the Spanish-language group when the letter transposition arises across a morpheme boundary.…”