The traces that novel morphologically complex words leave in memory are abstract in nature
Laura de Vaan | Centre for Language Studies, Radboud University Nijmegen
Kobie Van Krieken | Centre for Language Studies, Radboud University Nijmegen
Winie Van den Bosch | Centre for Language Studies, Radboud University Nijmegen
Robert Schreuder | Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition, and Behaviour, Radboud University Nijmegen
Mirjam Ernestus | Centre for Language Studies, Radboud University Nijmegen | Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen
Previous work has shown that novel morphologically complex words (henceforth neologisms) leave traces in memory after just one encounter. This study addressed the question whether these traces are abstract in nature or exemplars. In three experiments, neologisms were either primed by themselves or by their stems. The primes occurred in the visual modality whereas the targets were presented in the auditory modality (Experiment 1) or vice versa (Experiments 2 and 3). The primes were presented in sentences in a selfpaced reading task (Experiment 1) or in stories in a listening comprehension task (Experiments 2 and 3). The targets were incorporated in lexical decision tasks, auditory or visual (Experiment 1 and Experiment 2, respectively), or in stories in a self-paced reading task (Experiment 3). The experimental part containing the targets immediately followed the familiarization phase with the primes (Experiment 1), or after a one week delay (Experiments 2 and 3). In all experiments, participants recognized neologisms faster if they had encountered them before (identity priming) than if the familiarization phase only contained the neologisms’ stems (stem priming). These results show that the priming effects are robust despite substantial differences between the primes and the targets. This suggests that the traces novel morphologically complex words leave in memory after just one encounter are abstract in nature.
Alegre, M. and Gordon, P. (1999). Frequency effects and the representational status of regular inflections. Journal of Memory and Language, 401:41–61.
Baayen, R. H., Davidson, D. J., and Bates, D. M. (2008). Mixed-effects modeling with crossed random effects for subjects and items. Journal of Memory and Language, 591:390–412.
Baayen, R. H., Milin, P., Filipovic Durdevic, D., Hendrix, P., and Marelli, M. (2011). An amorphous model for morphological processing in visual comprehension based on naive discriminative learning. Psychological Review, 1181:438–482.
Baayen, R. H., Piepenbrock, R., and Gulikers, L. (1995). The CELEX lexical database (CD-ROM). Linguistic Data Consortium, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA.
Baayen, R. H. and Renouf, A. (1996). Chronicling The Times: Productive Lexical Innovations in an English Newspaper. Language, 721:69–96.
Bakker, I., Takashima, A., Van Hell, J. G., Janzen, G., and McQueen, J. M. (2014). Competition from unseen or unheard novel words: Lexical consolidation across modalities. Journal of Memory and Language, 731:116–130.
Bates, D. M. and Sarkar, D. (2005). The lme4 library. [On-line], Available: [URL].
Bloom, P. (2000). How Children Learn the Meanings of Words. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.
Booij, G. (2002). The Morphology of Dutch. Oxford University Press, Oxford.
Bradlow, A., Nygaard, L., and Pisoni, D. (1999). Effects of talker, rate, and amplitude variation on recognition memory for spoken words. Perception and Psychophysics, 611:206–219.
Butterworth, B. (1983). Lexical representation. In Butterworthi, B., editor, Language production (Vol.II): Development, Writing and other Language Processes, pages 257–294. Academic Press, London.
Clark, E. V. (1993). The Lexicon in Acquisition. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Coolen, R., Van Jaarsveld, H. J., and Schreuder, R. (1991). The interpretation of isolated novel nominal compounds. Memory and Cognition, 191:341–352.
Craik, F. and Kirsner, K. (1974). The effect of speaker’s voice on word recognition. Quarterly Jounal of Experimental Psychology, 26(2):274–284.
Crawley, M. J. (2002). Statistical computing. An introduction to data analysis using S-plus. Wiley, Chichester.
Crepaldi, D., Rastle, K., Coltheart, M., and Nickels, L. (2010). ’Fell’ primes ’fall’, but does ’bell’ prime ’ball’? Masked priming with irregularly inflected primes. Journal of Memory and Language, 631:83–99.
Epstein, M. (2012). The Transformative Humanities: A Manifesto. Continuum Publishing Corporation, New York.
Ernestus, M. and Mak, W. M. (2005). Analogical effects in reading Dutch verb forms. Memory and Cognition, 33(7):1160–1173.
Faraway, J. J. (2006). Extending Linear Models with R: Generalized Linear, Mixed Effects and Nonparametric Regression Models. Chapman & Hall/CRC, Boca Raton, FL.
Goh, W. (2005). Talker variability and recognition memory: instance-specific and voice specific effects. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 31(1):40–53.
Goldinger, S. D. (1996). Words and voices: Episodic traces in spoken word identification and recognition memory. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 22(5):1166–1183.
Goldinger, S. D. (1998). Echoes of echoes? An episodic theory of lexical access. Psychological Review, 1051:251–279.
Goldinger, S. D., Azuma, T., Kleider, H. M., and Holmes, V. M. (2003). Font-specific memory: more than meets the eye? In Bowers, J. and Marsolek, C., editors, Rethinking implicit memory, pages 157–196. Oxford University Press, Oxford.
Jaeger, T. F. (2008). Categorical data analysis: Away from anovas (transformation or not) and towards logit mixed models. Journal of Memory and Language, 591:434–446.
Janse, E. (2008). Spoken-word processing in aphasia: Effects of item overlap and item repetition. Brain and Language, 1051:185–198.
Jegerski, J. (2014). Self-paced reading. In Jegerski, J. and VanPatten, B., editors, Research methods in second language psycholinguistics, pages 20–49. Routledge, New York.
Just, M. A., Carpenter, P. A., and Woolley, J. D. (1982). Paradigms and processes in reading comprehension. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 1111:228–238.
Koornneef, A. W. and Van Berkum, J. J. A. (2006). On the use of verb-based implicit causality in sentence comprehension: Evidence from self-paced reading and eye tracking. Journal of Memory and Language, 54(4):445–465.
Kuznetsova, A., Brockhoff, P. B., and Christensen, R. H. B. (2016). Tests in Linear Mixed Effects Models. [URL].
Mattys, S. and Liss, J. (2008). On building models of spoken-word recognition: When there is as much to learn from natural ’oddities’ and artificial normality. Perception and Psychophysics, 70(7):1235–1242.
McLennan, C. and Luce, P. (2005). Examining the time course of indexical specificity effects in spoken word recognition. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 31(2):306–321.
McLennan, C., Luce, P., and Charles-Luce, J. (2003). Representation of lexical form. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 29(4):539–553.
Palmari, T., Goldinger, S., and Pisoni, D. (1993). Episodic encoding of voice attributes and recognition memory for spoken words. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 19(2):309–328.
Pinker, S. (1991). Rules of language. Science, 1531:530–535.
Pinker, S. and Ullman, M. (2002a). Combination and structure, not gradedness, is the issue: Reply to McClelland and Patterson. Trends in the Cognitive Sciences, 6(11):472–474.
Pinker, S. and Ullman, M. (2002b). The past and future of the past tense. Trends in the Cognitive Sciences, 6(11):456–462.
Rumelhart, D. E. and McClelland, J. L. (1986). On learning the past tenses of English verbs. In McClelland, J. L., Rumelhart, D. E., and the PDP research group, editors, Parallel distributed processing: Explorations in the microstructure of cognition. Volume II1, pages 216–271. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.
Seidenberg, M. S. and Gonnerman, L. M. (2000). Explaining derivational morphology as the convergence of codes. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 4(9):353–361.
Stemberger, J. P. and MacWhinney, B. (1986). Frequency and the lexical storage of regularly inflected forms. Memory and Cognition, 14(1):17–26.
Swets, B., Desmet, T., Clifton, C., and Ferreira, F. (2008). Underspecification of syntactic ambiguities: Evidence from self-paced reading. Memory and Cognition, 36(1):201–216.
Tulving, E. (1972). Episodic and semantic memory. In Tulving, E. and Donaldson, W., editors, Organization of memory, pages 381–403. Academic Press, New York.
Van Haeringen, C. B. (1971). Het achtervoegsel -ing: Mogelijkheden en beperkingen [The suffix -ing: Possibilities and restrictions]. De Nieuwe Taalgids, 641:449–468.
Yim, H., Dennis, S. J., and Sloutsky, V. M. (2013). The development of episodic memory: Items, contexts, and relations. Psycological Science, 241:2163–2172.