Morphological priming: the role of prime duration, semantic transparency, and affix position.

Patterns of facilitation in three lexical decision studies reveal several properties of morphologically complex words that influence processing. In one study, effects of morphological (VOWED-VOW) similarity are contrasted with effects of either semantic (PLEDGE-VOW) or orthographic (VOWEL-VOW) similarity at two prime durations to show the distinctiveness of morphological processing. In a second study, we compare morphologically complex forms that are semantically transparent (CASUALLY-CASUALNESS) with opaque forms (CASUALTY-CASUALNESS) and show that opaque relatives are more similar to VOWEL-VOW type pairs than to transparent relatives. In the third study, we examine facilitation for complex targets (CALCULATION) preceded by prefixed (MISCALCULATE) and suffixed (CALCULATOR) relatives and show that the position of the base morpheme influences processing under cross-modal but not under purely visual presentation conditions. Taken collectively, under comparable presentation conditions, semantic transparency but not base morpheme position constrains morphological processing.     

The influence of word frequency on the transposed-phoneme priming effect

Speech input like [byt] has been shown to facilitate not only the subsequent processing of an identical target word /byt/ but also that of a target word /tyb/ that contains the same phonemes in a different order. Using the short-term phonological priming paradigm, we examined the role of lexical representations in driving the transposed-phoneme priming effect by manipulating lexical frequency. Results showed that the transposed-phoneme priming effect occurs when targets have a higher frequency than primes, but not when they have a lower frequency. Our findings thus support the view that the transposed-phoneme priming effect results from partial activation of the target word’s lexical representation during prime processing. More generally, our study provides further evidence for a role for position-independent phonemes in spoken word recognition.

     

Morphological priming in the German mental lexicon.

We present results from cross-modal priming experiments on German participles and noun plurals. The experiments produced parallel results for both inflectional systems. Regular inflection exhibits full priming whereas irregularly inflected word forms show only partial priming: after hearing regularly inflected words (-t participles and -s plurals), lexical decision times on morphologically related word forms (presented visually) were similar to reaction times for a base-line condition in which prime and target were identical, but significantly shorter than in a control condition where prime and target were unrelated. In contrast, prior presentation of irregular words (-n participles and -er plurals) led to significantly longer response times on morphologically related word forms than the prior presentation of the target itself. Hence, there are clear priming differences between regularly and irregularly inflected German words. We compare the findings on German with experimental results on regular and irregular inflection in English and Italian, and discuss theoretical implications for single versus dual-mechanism models of inflection.     

Morphological decomposition and the reverse base frequency effect

If recognition of a polymorphemic word always takes place via its decomposition into stem and affix, then the higher the frequency of its stem (i.e., base frequency) the easier the lexical decision response should be when frequency of the word itself (i.e., surface frequency) is controlled. Past experiments have demonstrated such a base frequency effect, but not under all circumstances. Thus, a dual pathway notion has become dominant as an account of morphological processing whereby both decomposition and whole-word access is possible. Two experiments are reported here that demonstrate how an obligatory decomposition account can handle the absence of base frequency effects. In particular, it is shown that the later stage of recombining the stem and affix is harder for high base frequency words than for lower base frequency words when matched on surface frequency, and that this can counterbalance the advantage of easier access to the higher frequency stem. When the combination stage is crucial for discriminating the word items from the nonword items, a reverse base frequency effect emerges, revealing the disadvantage at this stage for high base frequency words. Such an effect is hard for the dual-pathway account to explain, but follows naturally from the idea of obligatory decomposition.     

The word frequency effect in recognition memory versus repetition priming

The role of word frequency in recognition memory and repetition priming was investigated by using a manipulation of attention. In Experiment 1, the lexical decision task produced greater repetition priming for low-frequency words than for high-frequency words following either the attended or the unattended study condition. The recognition memory test, on the other hand, showed a low-frequency word advantage only following the attended study condition. Furthermore, this advantage was limited to the measure of recognition memory based on conscious recollection of the study episode. In Experiment 2, a speeded recognition memory test replicated the pattern obtained with the unspeeded recognition memory test in Experiment 1. These results argue against the view that the word frequency effects in recognition memory and repetition priming have the same origin. Instead, the results suggest that the word frequency effect in recognition memory has its locus in conscious recollection.     

The role of subjective frequency in language switching: An ERP investigation using masked priming

Two experiments examined the nature of language-switching effects in a priming paradigm with event-related brain potential (ERP) recordings. primes and targets were always unrelated words but could be either from the same or different languages (Experiment 1) or from the same or a different frequency range (Experiment 2). Effects of switching language across prime and target differed as a function of the direction of the switch and prime duration in Experiment 1. Effects tended to be stronger with 100-ms prime durations than with 50-ms durations, and the expected pattern of greater negativity in the switch condition appeared earlier when primes were in L1 and targets in L2 than vice versa. Experiment 2 examined whether these language-switching effects could be due to differences in the subjective frequency of words in a bilingual’s two languages, by testing a frequency-switching manipulation within the L1. Effects of frequency switching were evident in the ERP waveforms, but the pattern did not resemble the language-switching effects, therefore suggesting that different mechanisms are at play.     

Alcohol dependence and the priming effect.

The concepts of loss of control and craving are reviewed and relevant experimental findings are discussed. Speed of drinking is proposed as a behavioural measure of craving and an experiment is described to test the hypothesis that craving is primed by a moderate dose of alcohol (45 gm). The hypothesis was confirmed, but only for the severely dependent alcoholics. The results indicated that the behavioural measure of craving and the assessment of severity of dependence were crucial. Failure to measure either of them would have resulted in failure to identify a priming effect.     

Morphological priming by itself: A study of Portuguese conjugations

Does the language processing system make use of abstract grammatical categories and representations that are not directly visible from the surface form of a linguistic expression? This study examines stem-formation processes and conjugation classes, a case of ‘pure’ morphology that provides insight into the role of grammatical structure in language processing. We report results from a cross-modal priming experiment examining 1st and 3rd conjugation verb forms in Portuguese. Although items were closely matched with respect to a range of non-morphological factors, distinct priming patterns were found for 1st and 3rd conjugation stems. We attribute the observed priming patterns to different representations of conjugational stems, combinatorial morphologically structured ones for 1st conjugation and unanalyzed morphologically unstructured ones for 3rd conjugation stems. Our findings underline the importance of morphology for language comprehension indicating that morphological analysis goes beyond the identification of grammatical morphemes.     

The negative priming effect: Inhibitory priming by ignored objects

A priming paradigm was employed to investigate the processing of an ignored object during selection of an attended object. Two issues were investigated: the level of internal representation achieved for the ignored object, and the subsequent fate of this representation. In Experiment 1 a prime display containing two superimposed objects was briefly presented. One second later a probe display was presented containing an object to be named. If the ignored object in the prime display was the same as the subsequent probe, naming latencies were impaired. This effect is termed negative priming. It suggests that internal representations of the ignored object may become associated with inhibition during selection. Thus, selection of a subsequent probe object requiring these inhibited representations is delayed. Experiment 2 replicated the negative priming effect with a shorter inter-stimulus interval. Experiment 3 examined the priming effects of both the ignored and the selected objects. The effect of both identity repetition and a categorical relationship between prime and probe stimuli were investigated. The data showed that for a stimulus selected from the prime display, naming of the same object in the probe display was facilitated. When the same stimulus was ignored in the prime display, however, naming of it in the probe display was again impaired (negative priming). That negative priming was also demonstrated with categorically related objects suggests that ignored objects achieve categorical levels of representation, and that the inhibition may be at this level.     

Influence of prime lexicality,frequency, and pronounceability on the masked onset priming effect

The present study investigates the origins of the masked onset priming effect (MOPE). There are two alternative interpretations that account for most of the evidence reported on the MOPE, so far. The speech planning account (SP) identifies the locus of the MOPE in the preparation of the speech response. In contrast, the dual-route theory proposes that the effect arises as a result of the processing of the prime by the nonlexical route. In a series of masked onset priming word naming experiments we test the validity of these accounts by manipulating the primes' frequency, their lexical status, and pronounceability. We found consistent MOPEs of similar magnitude with high- and low-frequency prime words as well as with pronounceable nonwords. Contrarily, when primes consisted of unpronounceable consonantal strings the effect disappeared, suggesting that pronounceability of the prime is a prerequisite for the emergence of the MOPE. These results are in accordance with the predictions of the SP account. The pattern of effects obtained in the present study further defines the origins of the MOPE.     

Semantic priming of person recognition: Categorial priming may be a weaker form of the associative priming effect

An interactive activation and competition account (Burton, Bruce, & Johnston, 1990) of the semantic priming effect in person recognition studies relies on the fact that primes and targets (people) have semantic information in common. However, recent investigations into the type of relationship needed to mediate the semantic priming effect have suggested that the prime and target must be close associates (e.g., Barry, Johnston, & Scanlan, 1998; Young, Flude, Hellawell, & Ellis, 1994). A review of these and similar papers suggests the possibility of a small but non-reliable effect based purely on categorial relationships. Experiment 1 provided evidence that when participants were asked to make a name familiarity decision it was possible to boost this small categorial effect when multiple (four) primes were presented prior to the target name. Results from Experiment 2 indicated that the categorial effect was not due to the particular presentation times of the primes. This boosted categorial effect was shown to cross domains (names to faces) in Experiment 3 and persist in Experiment 4 when the task involved naming the target face. The similarity of the pattern of results produced by the associative priming effect and this boosted categorial effect suggests that the two may be due to the same underlying mechanism in semantic memory.     

Reversing the affective congruency effect: The role of target word frequency of occurrence

In this research the outcome of an affective priming experiment is shown to critically depend on the frequency of occurrence of the target words used. Low frequency target words (5.7 occurrences per million words) resulted in an affective congruency effect, i.e., faster responses following affectively congruent than incongruent primes. High frequency target words (32.6 occurrences per million) resulted in a reverse priming effect, i.e., faster responses following incongruent than congruent primes. The size of the congruency effect was larger than the size of the reverse priming effect, thus masking its emergence when word frequency was not taken into account. We propose that target word frequency has its influence via an accessibility-related mechanism having to do with differences in observed changes in affect between prime and target.     

The role of short-term memory in semantic priming.

Two theories of priming were compared: spreading activation theories, in particular ACT, and compound-cue theories. Whereas ACT assumes that priming is a result of diffusing activation in long-term memory, compound-cue models suggest that priming results from a formation process of prime and target in short-term memory. Thirty-eight participants took part in a study that combined a digit span task with a double lexical decision task consisting of a prime and a target item. Digit span length (low, medium, and high) and prime type (related or unrelated word or nonword) were both within-subject variables. As expected, results showed significant priming effects. In favor of ACT, no interaction between digit span length and prime type was found. Additionally, a nonword inhibition effect (unrelated versus nonword prime) was found, which was predicted by compound-cue theories. This finding is discussed in terms of the process interference and response competition hypotheses.     

Morphological priming: Dissociation of phonological, semantic, and morphological factors

Previous experiments based on a masked-priming paradigm revealed robust morphological priming effects induced by two derivational morphemes in Hebrew: the root and the verbal pattern. However, considering the special characteristics of the masked-priming paradigm, the possible contributions of phonological and/or semantic factors to these morphological effects could not be firmly assessed. In the present study, the role of these factors in morphological priming was examined, using cross-modal presentation. Experiment 1 revealed that priming between morphologically related words in Hebrew is determined by higher level linguistic characteristics and cannot be reduced to phonological overlap. Experiment 2 confirmed that morphological priming occurs in Hebrew even when primes and targets are not semantically related but, nevertheless, increases with semantic similarity. The results support the claim that morphological priming cannot be accounted for by considering semantic and phonological factors alone, and they exemplify the potential of using both masked and cross-modal priming to examine morphological processing.     

Influence of probe-trial selection on the location negative priming effect.

Using the location variant of the typical negative priming procedure, participants were cued (100% reliable) before (Experiment 1) or after (Experiment 2) the prime trial as to whether a distractor would or would not accompany the target on the probe trial. The crucial results were that on cued trials, the predictable absence, produced the removal of the negative priming effect (disengagement), and that this disengagement of the priming process, motivated by the predictable absence of a probe-trial distractor, could take place on-line. These findings demonstrated the "selection-state" dependency (probe trial) of the location negative priming process, supporting inhibition-based and episodic retrieval models in their contention that the ultimate function of this process is to enhance the efficiency of future distractor processing, and hence selection. The disengagement results revealed an adaptive feature of a process that can be detrimental or irrelevant to upcoming processing.     

On the role of competing word units in visual word recognition: the neighborhood frequency effect

Current models of word recognition generally assume that word units orthographically similar to a stimulus word are involved in the visual recognition of this word. We refer to this set of orthographically similar words as an orthographic neighborhood. Two experiments are presented that investigate the ways in which the composition of this neighborhood can affect word recognition. The data indicate that the presence in the neighborhood of at least one unit of higher frequency than the stimulus word itself results in interference in stimulus word processing. Lexical decision latencies (Experiment 1) and gaze durations (Experiment 2) to words with one neighbor of higher frequency were significantly longer than to words without a more frequent neighbor. This neighborhood frequency effect is discussed in terms of the different types of candidate selection process postulated by contemporary models of visual word recognition.     

Components of the between-language semantic priming effect

Abstract

The robustness of the between-language semantic priming effect was investigated in two experiments. In the first, we found that the effect is not affected by language expectation in a lexical decision task. In the second experiment, a reliable between-language effect was obtained when the subjects had to pronounce the target. For both experiments, there was equal between- and within-language semantic priming which was insensitive to SO A. The results suggest the effects of prime-language and target-language on semantic priming are additive, and are consistent with the amodal representation of concepts.     

The role of probe trial distractors in the production/removal of the spatial negative priming effect

When a current (probe trial) target arises at a location formerly occupied by a distractor event (prime trial; ignored-repetition trial), its reaction time is slower than when it occurs at a previously empty location (control trial), revealing a spatial negative priming (SNP) effect. Here, we examined the influence of prime- and probe trial distractor identity similarity on the retrieval of the stored representations of prime trial processing (i.e., indexed by SNP production), in a context where the prevention of the SNP phenomenon had been motivated (via low probability of probe distractor presence—.25). Two results were important. One, the SNP effect was evident when the prime–probe distractor identities fully matched, but not when they partially or totally mismatched, showing a retrieval role for the probe distractor. Two, target-repeat trial latency facilitation showed the same pattern, indicating that representations of prime target and distractor processing are retrieved together, indicative of an episodic storage format. Since target identity remained fixed, the role of a matching probe distractor identity in SNP production was to presumably complete the triggering requirement (i.e., full event identity matching) for accessing the episodically stored representations.     

Syntactic priming in comprehension: the role of argument order and animacy

Two visual-world eye-movement experiments investigated the nature of syntactic priming during comprehension--specifically, whether the priming effects in ditransitive prepositional object (PO) and double object (DO) structures (e.g., "The wizard will send the poison to the prince/the prince the poison?") are due to anticipation of structural properties following the verb (send) in the target sentence or to anticipation of animacy properties of the first postverbal noun. Shortly following the target verb onset, listeners looked at the recipient more (relative to the theme) following DO than PO primes, indicating that the structure of the prime affected listeners' eye gazes on the target scene. Crucially, this priming effect was the same irrespective of whether the postverbal nouns in the prime sentences did ("The monarch will send the painting to the president") or did not ("The monarch will send the envoy to the president") differ in animacy, suggesting that PO/DO priming in comprehension occurs because structural properties, rather than animacy features, are being primed when people process the ditransitive target verb.     

Involuntary awareness and implicit priming: role of retrieval context

This study examined the role of retrieval context in implicit priming by manipulating percentage of word-stem index as shallow and deep processing while performing a word-stem completion task. 80 subjects were randomly divided into four groups each of 20 subjects: shallow processing or deep processing with few retrieval indices, and shallow processing or deep processing with many retrieval indices. Analysis indicated that proportion of word-stem completion was significantly higher for studied words than for nonstudied words in all four groups and that the subjects in the groups with many retrieval indices had a significantly increased proportion of word-stem completion between studied and nonstudied words than those in the groups with few retrieval indices. Postquestionnaire analysis indicated that more previously studied items were retrieved if many studied items were available during implicit word-stem completion and that only a small proportion of word-stem completion was finished with studied words by the subjects who were aware of the prior studied and test word relations in all four groups. It was concluded that having more studied words retrievable contributed to more being retrieved and that involuntary awareness had very limited influence on the priming in the implicit word-stem completion.