What do fully visible primes and brain potentials reveal about morphological decomposition?
To examine the role of meaning in morphological decomposition ({re-}+{play}), researchers have employed the priming paradigm. Perceptually masked primes lead to facilitation both when decomposition is semantically appropriate (hunter-HUNT) and when it is not (corner-CORN), whereas with fully visible primes facilitation is observed only in the former case. We investigated the N400 brain potential time-locked to words preceded by fully visible primes. At ∼300-380 ms, N400 was equally attenuated in the semantically "transparent" condition (hunter-HUNT) and semantically "opaque" condition (corner-CORN). In the transparent condition, N400 remained attenuated after 380 ms, whereas in the opaque condition it returned to the level of a nonmorphological form condition (brothel-BROTH). This pattern of N400 priming is consistent with an orthography-based, morphological decomposition mechanism, "licensed" at a later stage by semantic information.
Lavric
Aureliu
A
School of Psychology, University of Exeter, Exeter, UK. a.lavric@exeter.ac.uk
Rastle
Kathleen
K
Clapp
Amanda
A
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D002540:Cerebral Cortex / Q000502:physiology*; D032882:Comprehension / Q000502:physiology; D004569:Electroencephalography; D005071:Evoked Potentials / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual / Q000502:physiology*; D010470:Perceptual Masking / Q000502:physiology*; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology; D011932:Reading