title: Must analysis of meaning follow analysis of form? A time course analysis.
abstract: Many models of word recognition assume that processing proceeds sequentially from analysis of form to analysis of meaning. In the context of morphological processing, this implies that morphemes are processed as units of form prior to any influence of their meanings. Some interpret the apparent absence of differences in recognition latencies to targets (SNEAK) in form and semantically similar (sneaky-SNEAK) and in form similar and semantically dissimilar (sneaker-SNEAK) prime contexts at a stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) of 48 ms as consistent with this claim. To determine the time course over which degree of semantic similarity between morphologically structured primes and their targets influences recognition in the forward masked priming variant of the lexical decision paradigm, we compared facilitation for the same targets after semantically similar and dissimilar primes across a range of SOAs (34-100 ms). The effect of shared semantics on recognition latency increased linearly with SOA when long SOAs were intermixed (Experiments 1A and 1B) and latencies were significantly faster after semantically similar than dissimilar primes at homogeneous SOAs of 48 ms (Experiment 2) and 34 ms (Experiment 3). Results limit the scope of form-then-semantics models of recognition and demonstrate that semantics influences even the very early stages of recognition. Finally, once general performance across trials has been accounted for, we fail to provide evidence for individual differences in morphological processing that can be linked to measures of reading proficiency.
authors: Department of Psychology, University at Albany, State University of New York Albany, NY, USA ; Haskins Laboratories New Haven, CT, USA.
authors: Laurie B
authors: LB
authors: Feldman
authors: Quantitative Linguistics Group of Harald Baayen, Eberhard Karls University Tbingen, Germany ; Faculty of Philosophy, University of Novi Sad Novi Sad, Serbia.
authors: Petar
authors: P
authors: Milin
authors: Haskins Laboratories New Haven, CT, USA.
authors: Kit W
authors: KW
authors: Cho
authors: Department of Linguistics, University of California, Santa Barbara Santa Barbara, CA, USA.
authors: Fermín
authors: F
authors: Moscoso Del Prado Martín
authors: Department of Psychology, University at Albany, State University of New York Albany, NY, USA.
authors: Patrick A
authors: PA
authors: O'Connor
keywords: morphological processing; reading proficiency; semantic transparency