Previous research suggests that while free morpheme identification during visual word recognition is
position-independent, suffixes are activated only when they occur after the stem. Surprisingly, prefix position coding has not yet
been assessed. This point is important given that some experimental studies demonstrated clear processing differences between
prefixes and suffixes. In this study we examined whether Spanish suffixes and prefixes are recognized independently of their
position by adapting the Crepaldi, Rastle, and Davis’s (2010) experimental paradigm. We
observed that morphologically structured nonwords in which the affix occurs in its typical position (e.g., curiosura,
disgrave) are rejected more slowly and less accurately than their matched orthographic controls (e.g.,
curiosula, dusgrave). Crucially, such morpheme interference effect is completely absent when the morphemes
are inverted (i.e., uracurios and gravedis are rejected as easily as ulacurios
and gravedus). Our data provide strong support to the hypothesis that all affix processing is sensitive to
position.
Amenta, S., and Crepaldi, D. (2012). Morphological processing as we know it: An analytical review of morphological effects in visual word identification. Frontiers in Psychology, 31, 1–12.
Baayen, R. H. (2008). Analyzing linguistic data: A practical introduction to statistics using R. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Baayen, R. H., Davidson, D. J., & Bates, D. M. (2008). Mixed-effects modeling with crossed random effects for subjects and items. Journal of Memory and Language, 591, 390–412.
Bai, C., Cai, S., and Schumacher, P. B. (2011). Reversibility in Chinese word formation influences target identification. Neuroscience Letters, 4991, 14–18.
Bates, D., Maechler, M., Bolker, B., and Walker, S. (2015). Fitting Linear Mixed-Effects Models Using lme4. Journal of Statistical Software, 67(1), 1–48.
Beauvillain, C. (1996). The integration of morphological and whole-word form information during eye fixations on prefixed and suffixed words. Journal of Memory & Language, 351, 801–820.
Bergman, M. W., Hudson, P. T. W., and Eling, P. A. T. M. (1988). How simple complex words can be: Morphological processing and word representations. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology Section A: Human Experimental Psychology, 401, 41–72.
Beyersmann, E., Ziegler, J. C., and Grainger, J. (2015). Differences in the processing of prefixes and suffixes revealed by a letter-search task. Scientific Studies of Reading, 191, 360–373.
Burani, C., Dovetto, F. M., Thornton, A. M., and Laudanna, A. (1996). Accessing and naming suffixed pseudo-words. In G. E. Booij and J. Van Marie (Eds.), Yearbook of morphology 1996 (pp. 55–72). Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer Academic.
Caramazza, A., Laudanna, A., and Romani, C. (1988). Lexical access and inflectional morphology. Cognition, 281, 297–332.
Colé, P., Beauvillain, C., and Segui, J. (1989). On the representation and processing of prefixed and suffixed derived words: a differential frequency effect. Journal of Memory and Language, 281, 1–13.
Crepaldi, D., Hemsworth, L., Davis, C. J., and Rastle, K. (2016). Masked suffix priming and morpheme positional constraints. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 691, 113–128.
Crepaldi, D., Rastle, K., and Davis, C. J. (2010). Morphemes in their place: Evidence for position-specific identification of suffixes. Memory & Cognition, 381, 312–321.
Crepaldi, D., Rastle, K., Davis, C. J., and Lupker, S. J. (2013). Seeing stems everywhere: Position-independent identification of stem morphemes. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 39(2), 510–525.
Davis, C. J., and Perea, M. (2005). BuscaPalabras: A program for deriving orthographic and phonological neighborhood statistics and other psycholinguistic indices in Spanish. Behavior Research Methods, 37(4), 665–671.
Domínguez, A., Cuetos, F., and Segui, J. (2000). Morphological processing in word recognition: A review with particular reference to Spanish data. Psicológica, 211, 375–401.
Duñabeitia, J. A., Laka, I., Perea, M., and Carreiras, M. (2009). Is Milkman a superhero like Batman? Constituent morphological priming in compound words. European Journal of Cognitive Psychology, 211, 615–640.
Feldman, L. B., and Larabee, J. (2001). Morphological facilitation following prefixed but not suffixed primes: Lexical architecture or modality-specific processes?Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 27(3), 680–691.
Forster, K. I., and Forster, J. C. (2003). DMDX: A Windows display program with millisecond accuracy. Behavior Research Methods, Instruments & Computers, 351, 116–124.
Giraudo, H., and Grainger, J. (2001). Priming complex words: Evidence for supralexical representation of morphology. Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, 81, 127–131.
Giraudo, H., and Grainger, J. (2003). On the role of derivational affixes in recognizing complex words: Evidence from masked affix priming. In R. H. Baayen and R. Schreuder (Eds.), Morphological Structure in Language Processing, (pp. 209–232). Berlin, Germany: Mouton de Gruyter.
Grainger, J., and Beyersmann, E. (2017). Edge-aligned embedded word activation initiates morpho-orthographic segmentation. In B. H. Ross (Ed.), The Psychology of Learning and Motivation (pp. 285–317). Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Academic Press.
Grainger, J., Colé, P., and Segui, J. (1991). Masked morphological priming in visual word recognition. Journal of Memory and Language & Speech, 301, 370–384.
Harm, M. W., and Seidenberg, M. S. (2004). Computing the meanings of words in reading: Cooperative division of labor between visual and phonological processes. Psychological Review, 111(3), 662–720.
Heathcote, L., Nation, K., Castles, A., and Beyersmann, E. (2017). Do ‘blacheap’ and ‘subcheap’ both prime ‘cheap’? An investigation of morphemic status and position in early visual word processing. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 71(8), 1645–1654.
Jaichenco, V., and Wilson, M. (2013). El rol de la morfología en el proceso de aprendizaje de la lectura en español. Interdisciplinaria, 30(1), 85–99.
Kim, S. Y., Wang, M., and Taft, M. (2015). Morphological decomposition in the recognition of prefixed and suffixed words: Evidence from Korean. Scientific Studies of Reading, 19(3), 183–203.
Kuznetsova, A., Brockhoff, P. B., and Christensen, R. H. B. (2017). lmerTest Package: Tests in Linear Mixed Effects Models. Journal of Statistical Software, 82(13), 1–26.
Meunier, F., and Segui, J. (2002). Cross-modal morphological priming in French. Brain and Language, 811, 89–102.
Rastle, K., and Davis, M. H. (2008). Morphological decomposition based on the analysis of orthography. Language and Cognitive Processes, 231, 942–971.
R Core Team (2017). R: A language and environment for statistical computing. Vienna, Austria.: R Foundation for Statistical Computing.
Real Academia Española (1931). Gramática de la Lengua Española. Madrid: Espasa Calpe.
Rueckl, J. G., and Raveh, M. (1999). The influence of morphological regularities on the dynamics of a connectionist network. Brain and Language, 681, 110–117.
Seidenberg, M. S., and Gonnerman, L. M. (2000). Explaining derivational morphology as the convergence of codes. Trends in Cognitive Science, 41, 353–361.
Shoolman, N. and Andrews, S. (2003). Racehorses, reindeers and sparrows: Using masked priming to investigate morphological influences on word identification. In S. Kinoshita and S. Lupker (Eds.), Masked Priming: The State of the Art (pp. 241–278). New York, NY: Psychology Press.
Taft, M. (1985). The decoding of words in lexical access: A review of the morphographic approach. In D. Besner, T. G. Waller, and G. E. MacKinnon (Eds.), Reading Research: Advances in Theory and Practice (pp. 83–126). New York, NY: Academic Press.
Taft, M., and Forster, K. I. (1975). Lexical storage and retrieval of prefixed words. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 141, 638–647.
Taft, M., and Forster, K. I. (1976). Lexical storage and retrieval of polymorphemic and polysyllabic words. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 151, 607–620.
Taft, M., Zhu, X., and Peng, D. (1999). Positional specificity of radicals in Chinese character recognition. Journal of Memory and Language, 401, 498–519.
Val Álvaro, J. F. (1999). La composición. In I. Bosque and V. Demonte (Eds.), Gramática Descriptiva de la Lengua Española (pp. 4757–4841). Madrid: Espasa Calpe.
Varela Ortega, Soledad. (1990). Fundamentos de morfología. Madrid: Síntesis.
Varela, S., and Martín García, J. (1999). La prefijación. In I. Bosque and V. Demonte (Eds.), Gramática Descriptiva de la Lengua Española (pp. 4993–5040). Madrid: Espasa Calpe.
Cited by (4)
Cited by four other publications
Lázaro, Miguel, Teresa Simón, Ainoa Escalonilla & Trinidad Ruiz
2024. Mind the suffix: Pseudoword processing in children and adults. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 245 ► pp. 105977 ff.
Lázaro, Miguel, Ana García-Gutiérrez, Lorena García & José Antonio Hinojosa
2023. Pupillary Responses to Pseudowords With Different Morphological and Imageability Features. Journal of Psychophysiology 37:4 ► pp. 215 ff.
Lázaro, Miguel, Víctor Illera, Seila García & José María Ruíz Sánchez de León
2022. Morphological processing of complex and simple pseudo-words in adults and older adults. Language and Cognition 14:3 ► pp. 385 ff.
Stevens, Patience & David C. Plaut
2022. From decomposition to distributed theories of morphological processing in reading. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review 29:5 ► pp. 1673 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 19 september 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers.
Any errors therein should be reported to them.