The Mental Lexicon - Volume 1, Issue 2, 2006

The reported experiment examines the impact of stem frequency on lexical decision responses to prefixed words. Both when the nonword distractors had nonsense stems (e.g., recodge) and real-word stems (e.g., relaugh), words with high frequency stems (e.g., unreal) were recognized more quickly than words with low frequency stems (e.g., refuel) when matched on surface frequency. This was taken as evidence that a whole-word representation exists for prefixed words, but that activation of this representation is always mediated by a representation of the stem, unlike the claims of a Dual Pathways model.

Is morphological decomposition automatic? To address this question, we examine whether Hebrew readers decompose morphologically complex words when reading is not required, in the Stroop task. Morphological decomposition is assessed using two markers. One marker examines whether color-naming is modulated by morphologically complex words generated from color roots. For example, we compare words generated from the Hebrew root of “blue” displayed in either blue or an incongruent color. The second marker examines whether color-naming is sensitive to root phonotactics. Here we compare color-naming with words whose (color-unrelated) roots are either phonologically illicit (e.g., ssm) or well-formed (e.g., smm). Results suggest that morphological decomposition proceeds even when reading is discouraged, but unlike previous research with intentional reading tasks, Stroop-like conditions do not allow for a detailed representation of the root’s internal structure.

Two experiments are reported that tested whether syllables can be primed in English speech production using a (masked) priming paradigm. In Experiment 1, we presented masked syllable primes for 45 ms. In Experiment 2, primes were presented for either 45 ms or 105 ms under unmasked conditions. In both experiments, we tested three different SOAs, namely −200 ms, 0 ms, and +200 ms. Both under masked and under unmasked conditions phonological priming effects were obtained. However, no evidence for a syllabic priming effect was found. Instead, at SOAs −200 ms and 0 ms, priming effects increased when the segmental overlap between prime and target was increased. This outcome supports a segmental overlap account but contradicts the syllable priming hypothesis. The theoretical implications of the results for current theories of phonological encoding are discussed.

We report on two experiments that examined lexical semantic memory. Experiment 1 included semantically related word-pairs (similarity of meaning) and unrelated word-pairs from three grammatical categories (nouns, verbs, adjectives). Experiment 2 included semantically related word-pairs (contrasting meaning) and unrelated word-pairs from the same three categories. Results of both experiments showed similar levels of semantic priming across same versus different grammatical category word-pairs (e.g., verb–verb pairs vs. verb–adjective pairs). Additional analyses of each experiment showed similar levels of priming within each of the three grammatical categories (i.e., noun–noun vs. verb–verb vs. adjective–adjective pairs). These findings suggest that there are no sharp architectural distinctions amongst words from different grammatical categories within lexical semantic memory.

In a cross-modal (auditory-visual) fragment priming study in French, we tested the hypothesis that gender information given by a gender-marked article (e.g. unmasculine or unefeminine) is used early in the recognition of the following word to discard gender-incongruent competitors. In four experiments, we compared lexical decision performances on targets primed by phonological information only (e.g. /kRa/-CRAPAUD /kRapo/; /to/-TOAD) or by phonological plus gender information given by a gender-marked article (e.g. unmasculine /kra/-CRAPAUD; a /to/-TOAD). In all experiments, we found a phonological priming effect that was not modulated by the presence of gender context, whether gender-marked articles were congruent (Experiments 1, 2, and 3) or incongruent (Experiment 4) with the target gender. Moreover, phonological facilitation was not modulated by the presence of gender context, whether gender-marked articles allowed exclusion of less frequent competitors (Experiment 1) or more frequent ones (Experiments 2 and 3). We concluded that gender information extracted from a preceding gender-marked determiner is not used early in the process of spoken word recognition and that it may be used in a later selection process.

Several studies examining Italian have shown that morphemes are effective processing units in reading aloud. Faster naming times and greater accuracy have been found in the reading of pseudowords consisting of real root + real suffix, than for matched pseudowords not made up of such morphemes. The results of this study suggest that the root is of primary importance in the reading aloud of Italian pseudowords. Faster naming times were found both for real root + real suffix pseudowords and for real root + non-suffix pseudowords than for pseudowords which did not include any morpheme. This held true for a stimulus list consisting mostly of words (Experiment 1), and for one consisting of pseudowords only (Experiment 2). Real root + non-suffix pseudowords were read as fast as pseudowords that were fully parsable into morphemes (root + suffix), suggesting that a headstart to a morphemic route can be provided by the root only. However, root + non-suffix pseudowords were pronounced less accurately than root + suffix combinations, indicating that the identification of a root before initiating pronunciation may conflict with the full elaboration of vocal output. Experiment 3 investigated the roles of root and suffix. An effect of suffix on naming latencies was observed, but it was not as strong as the root effect. Taken together, the results suggest that roots and suffixes are accessed and activated in a cascaded manner during the reading aloud of Italian.