title: Human brain potentials indicate morphological decomposition in visual word recognition.
abstract: Stem homographs are pairs of words with the same orthographic description of their stem but which are semantically and morphologically unrelated (e.g. in Spanish: rata/rato (rat/moment)). In priming tasks, stem homographs produce inhibition, unlike morphologically related words (loca/loco (madwoman/madman)) which produce facilitation. An event-related potentials study was conducted to compare morphological and stem homographic priming effects. The results show a similar attenuation of the N400 component at the 350-500 ms temporal window for the two conditions. In contrast, a broad negativity occurs only for stem homographs at the 500-600 ms window. This late negativity is interpreted as the consequence of an inhibitory effect for stem homographs that delays the stage of meaning integration.
authors.affiliation: Departamento de Psicología Cognitiva, Universidad de La Laguna, 38205, S/C de Tenerife, Spain. hbarber@ull.es
authors.forename: Horacio
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Barber
authors.forename: Alberto
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Domínguez
authors.forename: Manuel
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: de Vega
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D002540:Cerebral Cortex / Q000502:physiology*; D004569:Electroencephalography; D005071:Evoked Potentials / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual / Q000502:physiology*; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D011597:Psychomotor Performance / Q000502:physiology*; D011932:Reading; D014705:Verbal Behavior / Q000502:physiology*