Haskins Publications

Number	1201
Year	1999
Drawer	23
Entry Date	03/29/2001
Authors	Feldman, L.B. & Soltano, E.G.
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Publication	Brain and Language, 68, 33-39.
url	http://www.haskins.yale.edu/Reprints/HL1201.pdf
Abstract	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.
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