Evidence for early morphological decomposition: Combining masked priming with magnetoencephalography
TL;DR: Data regarding the transitional probability from stem to affix in a post hoc comparison is presented, which suggests that this factor may modulate early morphological decomposition, particularly for opaque words.
Abstract: Are words stored as morphologically structured representations? If so, when during word recognition are morphological pieces accessed? Recent masked priming studies support models that assume early decomposition of (potentially) morphologically complex words. The electrophysiological evidence, however, is inconsistent. We combined masked morphological priming with magneto-encephalography (MEG), a technique particularly adept at indexing processes involved in lexical access. The latency of an MEG component peaking, on average, 220 msec post-onset of the target in left occipito-temporal brain regions was found to be sensitive to the morphological prime-target relationship under masked priming conditions in a visual lexical decision task. Shorter latencies for related than unrelated conditions were observed both for semantically transparent (cleaner-CLEAN) and opaque (corner-CORN) prime-target pairs, but not for prime-target pairs with only an orthographic relationship (brothel-BROTH). These effects are likely to reflect a prelexical level of processing where form-based representations of stems and affixes are represented and are in contrast to models positing no morphological structure in lexical representations. Moreover, we present data regarding the transitional probability from stem to affix in a post hoc comparison, which suggests that this factor may modulate early morphological decomposition, particularly for opaque words. The timing of a robust MEG component sensitive to the morphological relatedness of prime-target pairs can be used to further understand the neural substrates and the time course of lexical processing.
Citations
More filters
TL;DR: This article used magnetoencephalography, supported by a masked priming behavioral study, to map out the real-time functional architecture of visual word recognition, establishing basic feedforward processing relationships between orthographic form, morphological structure, and lexical meaning.
Abstract: Despite a century of research into visual word recognition, basic questions remain unresolved about the functional architecture of the process that maps visual inputs from orthographic analysis onto lexical form and meaning and about the units of analysis in terms of which these processes are conducted Here we use magnetoencephalography, supported by a masked priming behavioral study, to address these questions using contrasting sets of simple walk, complex swimmer, and pseudo-complex corner forms Early analyses of orthographic structure, detectable in bilateral posterior temporal regions within a 150-230 msec time frame, are shown to segment the visual input into linguistic substrings words and morphemes that trigger lexical access in left middle temporal locations from 300 msec These are primarily feedforward processes and are not initially constrained by lexical-level variables Lexical constraints become significant from 390 msec, in both simple and complex words, with increased processing of pseudowords and pseudo-complex forms These results, consistent with morpho-orthographic models based on masked priming data, map out the real-time functional architecture of visual word recognition, establishing basic feedforward processing relationships between orthographic form, morphological structure, and lexical meaning
37 citations
Cites result from "Evidence for early morphological de..."
...It is also consistent with earlier MEG evidence that orthographic processing in inferior and posterior temporal regions, over early 150–250 time windows, is sensitive to the presence of potential stems or affixes (e.g., Lehtonen et al., 2011)....
[...]
TL;DR: The way in which morphologically complex words are processed in L2 learners does change as their proficiency increases, validating the predictions of the declarative/procedural model.
33 citations
Cites background from "Evidence for early morphological de..."
...Various psycholinguistic methods have led to consistent findings that native speakers tend to decompose regular morphologically complex words in online processing (Clahsen, 2006a; Lehtonen et al., 2011; Lück et al., 2006; Newman et al., 2007)....
[...]
TL;DR: This paper used event-related brain potentials (ERPs) to investigate semantic, morphological and formal (orthographic) processing conjointly in a masked priming paradigm to reduce strategic effects related to prime perception and suppress semantic priming effects.
27 citations
TL;DR: Significant correlations were detected primarily in the left hemisphere, and remained significant after controlling for phonological or orthographic measures, suggesting some level of cognitive specificity in morphological processing of written words.
27 citations
TL;DR: The authors explored morphological decomposition processes with bilinguals, focusing on within and cross-language masked morphological priming effects, and found that the cognate status of masked Spanish primes was manipulated to explore the extent to which form overlap mediates cross-lingual morphology priming.
Abstract: This article explores how bilinguals perform automatic morphological decomposition processes, focusing on within- and cross-language masked morphological priming effects. In Experiment 1, unbalanced Spanish (L1)–English (L2) bilingual participants completed a lexical decision task on English targets that could be preceded by morphologically related or unrelated derived masked English and Spanish prime words. The cognate status of the masked Spanish primes was manipulated, in order to explore to what extent form overlap mediates cross-language morphological priming. In Experiment 2, a group of balanced native Basque–Spanish speakers completed a lexical decision task on Spanish targets preceded by morphologically related or unrelated Basque or Spanish masked primes. In this experiment, a large number of items were tested and the cognate status was manipulated according to a continuous measure of orthographic overlap, allowing for a fine-grained analysis of the role of form overlap in cross-language morpholo...
26 citations
References
More filters
TL;DR: A new general theory of acquired similarity and knowledge representation, latent semantic analysis (LSA), is presented and used to successfully simulate such learning and several other psycholinguistic phenomena.
Abstract: How do people know as much as they do with as little information as they get? The problem takes many forms; learning vocabulary from text is an especially dramatic and convenient case for research. A new general theory of acquired similarity and knowledge representation, latent semantic analysis (LSA), is presented and used to successfully simulate such learning and several other psycholinguistic phenomena. By inducing global knowledge indirectly from local co-occurrence data in a large body of representative text, LSA acquired knowledge about the full vocabulary of English at a comparable rate to schoolchildren. LSA uses no prior linguistic or perceptual similarity knowledge; it is based solely on a general mathematical learning method that achieves powerful inductive effects by extracting the right number of dimensions (e.g., 300) to represent objects and contexts. Relations to other theories, phenomena, and problems are sketched.
6,014 citations
"Evidence for early morphological de..." refers background in this paper
...According to semantic relatedness values (Latent Semantic Analysis; Landauer & Dumais, 1997), the prime–target pairs in the transparent condition were significantly more related semantically than in the opaque and orthographic conditions, which, in turn, did not differ from each other in terms of the semantic relatedness (see Rastle et al., 2004, for a statistical summary of the stimulus characteristics)....
[...]
...According to semantic relatedness values (Latent Semantic Analysis; Landauer & Dumais, 1997), the prime–target pairs in the transparent condition were significantly more related semantically than in the opaque and orthographic conditions, which, in turn, did not differ from each other in terms of…...
[...]
TL;DR: DMDX is a Windows-based program designed primarily for language-processing experiments that uses the features of Pentium class CPUs and the library routines provided in DirectX to provide accurate timing and synchronization of visual and audio output.
Abstract: DMDX is a Windows-based program designed primarily for language-processing experiments. It uses the features of Pentium class CPUs and the library routines provided in DirectX to provide accurate timing and synchronization of visual and audio output. A brief overview of the design of the program is provided, together with the results of tests of the accuracy of timing. The Web site for downloading the software is given, but the source code is not available.
2,541 citations
"Evidence for early morphological de..." refers methods in this paper
...The stimuli were presented using DMDX (Forster & Forster, 2003)....
[...]
TL;DR: It is concluded that connectionists' claims about the dispensability of rules in explanations in the psychology of language must be rejected, and that, on the contrary, the linguistic and developmental facts provide good evidence for such rules.
1,439 citations
TL;DR: The authors showed that the frequency attenuation effect is a product of the involvement of the episodic memory system in the lexical decision process, which is supported by the demonstration of constant repetition effects for high and low-frequency words when the priming stimulus is masked; the masking is assumed to minimize the influence of any possible episodic trace of the prime.
Abstract: Repetition priming effects in lexical decision tasks are stronger for low-frequency words than for high-frequency words. This frequency attenuation effect creates problems for frequency-ordered search models that assume a relatively stable frequency effect. The suggestion is made that frequency attenuation is a product of the involvement of the episodic memory system in the lexical decision process. This hypothesis is supported by the demonstration of constant repetition effects for high- and low-frequency words when the priming stimulus is masked; the masking is assumed to minimize the influence of any possible episodic trace of the prime. It is further shown that long-term repetition effects are much less reliable when the subject is not required to make a lexical decision response to the prime. When a response is required, the expected frequency attenuation effect is restored. It is concluded that normal repetition effects consist of two components: a very brief lexical effect that is independent of frequency and a long-term episodic effect that is sensitive to frequency. There has been much recent interest in the fact that in a lexical decision experiment, where subjects are required to classify letter strings as words or nonwords, there is a substantial increase in both the speed and the accuracy of classificatio n for words that are presented more than once during the experiment, even though considerable time may have elapsed between successive presen
1,324 citations
"Evidence for early morphological de..." refers background in this paper
...Masked priming has proven to be a powerful psycholinguistic tool in assessing lexical processes and representation (Forster, 1998; Forster & Davis, 1984)....
[...]
Book•
03 Jan 1986
TL;DR: The authors presented an alternative to the standard rule-based account of a child's acquisition of the past tense in English by dispensing with the assumption that the child learns rules and substituting in its place a simple homogeneous learning procedure.
Abstract: : This paper presents an alternative to the standard rule based account of a child's acquisition of the past tense in English. Children are typically said to pass through a three-phase acquisition process in which they first learn past tense by rote, then learn the past tense rule and over regularize, and then finally learn the exceptions to the rule. We show that the acquisition data can be accounted for in more detail by dispensing with the assumption that the child learns rules and substituting in its place a simple homogeneous learning procedure. We show how rule-like behavior can emerge from the interactions among a network of units encoding the root form to past tense mapping. A large computer simulation of the learning process demonstrates the operating principles of our alternative account, shows how details of the acquisition process not captured by the rule account emerge, and makes predictions about other details of the acquisition process not yet observed. Keywords: Learning; networks; Language; Verbs; Perceptions; Morphology.
1,210 citations