title: Decomposition, lookup, and recombination: MEG evidence for the full decomposition model of complex visual word recognition.
abstract: There is much evidence that visual recognition of morphologically complex words (e.g., teacher) proceeds via a decompositional route, first involving recognition of their component morphemes (teach + -er). According to the Full Decomposition model, after the visual decomposition stage, followed by morpheme lookup, there is a final "recombination" stage, in which the decomposed morphemes are combined and the well-formedness of the complex form is evaluated. Here, we use MEG to provide evidence for the temporally-differentiated stages of this model. First, we demonstrate an early effect of derivational family entropy, corresponding to the stem lookup stage; this is followed by a surface frequency effect, corresponding to the later recombination stage. We also demonstrate a late effect of a novel statistical measure, semantic coherence, which quantifies the gradient semantic well-formedness of complex words. Our findings illustrate the usefulness of corpus measures in investigating the component processes within visual word recognition.
authors: Department of Psychology, New York University, New York, NY, USA. Electronic address: fruchter@nyu.edu.
authors: Joseph
authors: J
authors: Fruchter
authors: Department of Psychology, New York University, New York, NY, USA; Department of Linguistics, New York University, New York, NY, USA; NYUAD Institute, New York University Abu Dhabi, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.
authors: Alec
authors: A
authors: Marantz
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D015225:Magnetoencephalography / Q000379:methods; D008297:Male; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual / Q000502:physiology*; D010775:Photic Stimulation / Q000379:methods*; D017397:Prefrontal Cortex / Q000502:physiology*; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology; D012660:Semantics; D013702:Temporal Lobe / Q000502:physiology*; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Lexical frequency; MEG; Morphological decomposition; Visual word recognition