Abstract
There is extensive evidence pointing to an early, automatic segmentation of written words into their constituent units (farm-er, wit-ness); however, less is known about the potential role of contextual information in modulating this analysis. We adapted the standard masked priming paradigm to include an overt semantic prime in order to examine whether semantic context influences morpho-orthographic segmentation of complex words. In particular, we asked how the context will affect processing of semantically opaque forms (witness), where the embedded stem (wit) is incompatible with the meaning of the whole form. Results showed no masked priming facilitation for opaque forms in the presence of a semantic prime, indicating that context can influence early morphological analysis. Priming was found for both semantically transparent and opaque forms (farmer-farm, witness-wit) when there was no semantically-related context, consistent with the literature and an account positing early blind segmentation. These findings provide an important update to the long-standing debate on early morphological processing in written word recognition.
Highlights
A substantial body of evidence has revealed that complex words undergo an early, blind, and automatic segmentation into their constituent parts (Rastle et al, 2004; Longtin and Meunier, 2005; Marslen-Wilson et al, 2008; McCormick et al, 2008; Rastle and Davis, 2008)
In this study we aimed to test the possible interaction between top-down contextual information and bottom-up morphological analysis
Previous masked priming studies have demonstrated that words are automatically segmented into their constituent parts based on the presence of a stem and a suffix (Longtin and Meunier, 2005; Marslen-Wilson et al, 2008; McCormick et al, 2008; Rastle and Davis, 2008; Beyersmann et al, 2016)
Summary
A substantial body of evidence has revealed that complex words undergo an early, blind, and automatic segmentation into their constituent parts (Rastle et al, 2004; Longtin and Meunier, 2005; Marslen-Wilson et al, 2008; McCormick et al, 2008; Rastle and Davis, 2008) This process of bottom-up, stimulus-driven word segmentation highlights the critical role of morphological structure in lexical access, whereby written word forms are automatically broken down into meaningful subunits, even when these subunits are not compatible with the meaning of the whole form (e.g., corner is not someone who corns). Recent evidence has further supported the claim that semantics does not play a role in early morpho-orthographic processing, given that blind segmentation is triggered for opaque forms even
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