Morphological Processing in Spelling

Abstract

Event Abstract Back to Event Morphological Processing in Spelling Victoria P. Shuster1, Simon Fischer-Baum2 and Michele Miozzo1* 1 The New School, Psychology, United States 2 Rice University, Psychology, United States Morphological information must be reliably encoded in both speaking and writing. However, relatively little is known about morphological processes in spelling. We report on a series of individuals with aphasia, with the goal of better understanding morphological processing in spelling. These individuals displayed a variety of spelling deficits affecting either orthographic information, sound-to-print conversion mechanisms, or the graphemic buffer. With each set of results, we aimed to reveal a specific aspect concerning the processing of morphology in spelling. A first set of results revealed a modality-specific double dissociation of inflectional and derivational processing, replicating the findings of Rapp, Fischer-Baum, and Miozzo (2015), in addition to extending their original work to the realm of derivation. These findings demonstrated that morphology is specifically represented within the orthographic system and need not rely on mechanisms for speaking. The distinction between inflection and derivation is a fundamental one in morphology. There is also evidence that distinct neural mechanisms support inflection and derivation in speaking. On the basis of this, our second question investigated if this same distinction exists in spelling. Results revealed that there may, in fact, be distinct representations of derived and inflected words within the orthographic system. These results were determined by the finding of a selective deficit for writing derivational suffixes, in contrast to intact inflectional suffix production. A further dissociation at the level of sub-lexical mechanisms was found, for which the mechanisms seem, at least to some degree, to support the processing of inflected words, but no evidence was found for support of derived words. The latter finding suggests that we must reconsider the traditional role of phoneme-to-grapheme mechanisms since it shows that these sub-lexical mechanisms have some rudimentary morphological capacity. A final set of results shed light on the representations of morphologically complex words. The results not only confirm previous findings that there is a decomposed representation of morphologically transparent words (e.g., camper: camp+er) in spelling, but also that this parsed representation extends to morphologically opaque words, (e.g., corner: corn+er). Evidence of this kind of representation has also been found in reading. The replication of this finding in spelling suggests that a shared orthographic representation exists for reading and spelling. Taken together, these three sets of findings provide an outlook on various aspects of how morphology is processed in spelling. References Rapp, B., Fisher-Baum, S., & Miozzo, M. (2015). Modality and morphology: What we write may not be what we say. Psychological Science, 26, 892-902. Keywords: morphology, spelling, Writing, Aphasia, dysgraphia Conference: Academy of Aphasia 55th Annual Meeting , Baltimore, United States, 5 Nov - 7 Nov, 2017. Presentation Type: oral presentation Topic: Consider for student award Citation: Shuster VP, Fischer-Baum S and Miozzo M (2019). Morphological Processing in Spelling. Conference Abstract: Academy of Aphasia 55th Annual Meeting . doi: 10.3389/conf.fnhum.2017.223.00051 Copyright: The abstracts in this collection have not been subject to any Frontiers peer review or checks, and are not endorsed by Frontiers. They are made available through the Frontiers publishing platform as a service to conference organizers and presenters. The copyright in the individual abstracts is owned by the author of each abstract or his/her employer unless otherwise stated. Each abstract, as well as the collection of abstracts, are published under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 (attribution) licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) and may thus be reproduced, translated, adapted and be the subject of derivative works provided the authors and Frontiers are attributed. For Frontiers’ terms and conditions please see https://www.frontiersin.org/legal/terms-and-conditions. Received: 21 Apr 2017; Published Online: 25 Jan 2019. * Correspondence: Dr. Michele Miozzo, The New School, Psychology, New York, New York, 10011, United States, mm1150@columbia.edu Login Required This action requires you to be registered with Frontiers and logged in. To register or login click here. Abstract Info Abstract The Authors in Frontiers Victoria P Shuster Simon Fischer-Baum Michele Miozzo Google Victoria P Shuster Simon Fischer-Baum Michele Miozzo Google Scholar Victoria P Shuster Simon Fischer-Baum Michele Miozzo PubMed Victoria P Shuster Simon Fischer-Baum Michele Miozzo Related Article in Frontiers Google Scholar PubMed Abstract Close Back to top Javascript is disabled. Please enable Javascript in your browser settings in order to see all the content on this page.