The Morpheme Interference Effect in Hebrew

Abstract

An extensive body of psycholinguistic research suggests that word reading involves morphological decomposition: Individual morphemes are extracted and lexically accessed when skilled readers are presented with multi-morphemic orthographic stimuli. This view is supported by the Morpheme Interference Effect (MIE): Responses to pseudowords that contain real morphemes are slower and less accurate than responses to pseudowords that contain invented morphemes. The MIE was previously demonstrated in several languages with linear morphologies. Here, we examined whether the MIE applies to Hebrew, a language with an interleaved morphology, and whether it generalizes across the nominal and verbal domains. Participants performed a lexical decision task on visually presented Hebrew words and pseudowords derived from real or invented roots. The results showed robust MIEs in both the verbal and nominal domains. Specifically, pseudowords derived from real roots induced significantly lower accuracy and longer response times compared to pseudowords derived from invented roots. Participants’ verbal and nominal MIEs were significantly correlated, suggesting that the MIE captures a general sensitivity to morphological structure.