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.
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TL;DR: The results show that readers with dyslexia can rely on morphological decomposition to compensate for their deficits in phonological decoding, and highlight the way in which unique language specific properties shape the neural mechanisms underlying typical and atypical reading.
4 citations
01 Jan 2015
TL;DR: The study investigates the processing of morphologically complex words in Czech using morphological repetition priming to test the Split Morphology Hypothesis and tests the psycholinguistic reality of the linguistic distinction between two types of inflective verbal prefixes.
Abstract: The study investigates the processing of morphologically complex words in Czech. In Experiment 1 we employed morphological repetition priming to test the Split Morphology Hypothesis, i.e. whether derived and inflected word forms are stored in the same or different manner in the Czech mental lexicon. The results demonstrate significantly larger priming effects for inflected forms compared to derived forms indicating distinct processing of inflection and derivation in Czech; while inflected forms are fully decomposed during language comprehension, derived forms are either not, or only partially. In Experiment 2 we addressed two research questions. First, we tested the psycholinguistic reality of the linguistic distinction between two types of inflective verbal prefixes: (a) “purely” inflective aspectual prefixes (i.e. the prefix turns an imperfective verb into a perfective one as in hřešit (imp.; ‘to sin’) — zhřešit (perf.)) and (b) derivational verbal prefixes (e.g. krátit (imp.; ‘to shorten’) — zkrátit (perf.)). The results did not indicate any evidence that this distinction would be psycholinguistically grounded. Second, we examined the role of semantic transparency of the derivational prefixes in the processing. The experiment delivered evidence of slower processing of opaque derived verbs, most likely caused by double search/reanalysis.
3 citations
Cites background from "Evidence for early morphological de..."
...Further evidence for the decomposition of morphologically complex words comes from studies using masked priming (Rastle — Davis — New, 2004; Lehtonen et al., 2011) or combining masked priming and magnetoencephalography (MEG) (e....
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...New, 2004; Lehtonen et al., 2011) or combining masked priming and magnetoencephalography (MEG) (e.g. Solomyak — Marantz, 2010)....
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TL;DR: It is assumed that the good performance of such models in global measures such as gaze durations or reaction times in lexical decision largely stems from postlexical reanalysis or decision processes.
Abstract: We studied how statistical models of morphology that are built on different kinds of representational units, i.e., models emphasizing either holistic units or decomposition, perform in predicting human word recognition. More specifically, we studied the predictive power of such models at early vs. late stages of word recognition by using eye-tracking during two tasks. The tasks included a standard lexical decision task and a word recognition task that assumedly places less emphasis on postlexical reanalysis and decision processes. The lexical decision results showed good performance of Morfessor models based on the Minimum Description Length optimization principle. Models which segment words at some morpheme boundaries and keep other boundaries unsegmented performed well both at early and late stages of word recognition, supporting dual- or multiple-route cognitive models of morphological processing. Statistical models based on full forms fared better in late than early measures. The results of the second, multi-word recognition task showed that early and late stages of processing often involve accessing morphological constituents, with the exception of short complex words. Late stages of word recognition additionally involve predicting upcoming morphemes on the basis of previous ones in multimorphemic words. The statistical models based fully on whole words did not fare well in this task. Thus, we assume that the good performance of such models in global measures such as gaze durations or reaction times in lexical decision largely stems from postlexical reanalysis or decision processes. This finding highlights the importance of considering task demands in the study of morphological processing.
3 citations
TL;DR: The authors investigated the abilities of individuals with agrammatic (PPA-G) and log-openic variants of primary progressive aphasia and individuals with stroke-induced Agrammatic Aphasia (StrAg) to process pseudowords which violate either the syntactic (word class) rules (reclever) or the semantic compatibility (argument structure specifications of the base form) rules (*resmile).
Abstract: We addressed an understudied topic in the literature of language disorders, i.e. processing of derivational morphology, a domain which requires integration of semantic and syntactic knowledge. Current psycholinguistic literature suggests that word processing involves morpheme recognition occurring immediately upon encountering a complex word. Subsequent processes take place in order to interpret the combination of stem and affix. We investigated the abilities of individuals with agrammatic (PPA-G) and logopenic (PPA-L) variants of primary progressive aphasia and individuals with stroke-induced agrammatic aphasia (StrAg) to process pseudowords which violate either the syntactic (word class) rules (*reclever) or the semantic compatibility (argument structure specifications of the base form) rules (*resmile). To this end, we quantified aspects of word knowledge and explored how the distinct deficits of the populations under investigation affect their performance. Thirty brain-damaged individuals and 10 healthy controls participated in a lexical decision task. We hypothesized that the two agrammatic groups (PPA-G and StrAg) would have difficulties detecting syntactic violations, while no difficulties were expected for PPA-L. Accuracy and Reaction Time (RT) patterns indicated: the PPA-L group made fewer errors but yielded slower RTs compared to the two agrammatic groups which did not differ from one another. Accuracy rates suggest that individuals with PPA-L distinguish *reclever from *resmile, reflecting access to and differential processing of syntactic vs. semantic violations. In contrast, the two agrammatic groups do not distinguish between *reclever and *resmile. The lack of difference stems from a particularly impaired performance in detecting syntactic violations, as they were equally unsuccessful at detecting *reclever and *resmile. Reduced grammatical abilities assessed through language measures are a significant predictor for this performance, suggesting that the “hardware” to process syntactic information is impaired. Therefore, they can only judge violations semantically where both *reclever and *resmile fail to pass as semantically ill-formed. This finding further suggests that impaired grammatical knowledge can affect word level processing as well. Results are in line with the literature which postulates the existence of stages in accessing complex pseudowords, highlighting the contribution of syntactic/grammatical knowledge. Further, it points to the worth of studying impaired language performance for informing normal language processes.
2 citations
References
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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)....
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...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…...
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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)....
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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)....
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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