Morphological processing as we know it: An analytical review of morphological effects in visual word identification

The last 40 years have witnessed a growing interest in the mechanisms underlying the visual identification of complex words. A large amount of experimental data has been amassed, but although a growing number of studies are proposing explicit theoretical models for their data, no comprehensive theory has gained substantial agreement among scholars in the field. We believe that this is due, at least in part, to the presence of several controversial pieces of evidence in the literature and, consequently, to the lack of a well-defined set of experimental facts that any theory should be able to explain. With this review, we aim to delineate the state of the art in the research on the visual identification of complex words. By reviewing major empirical evidences in a number of different paradigms such as lexical decision, word naming, and masked and unmasked priming, we were able to identify a series of effects that we judge as reliable or that were consistently replicated in different experiments, along with some more controversial data, which we have tried to resolve and explain. We concentrated on behavioral and electrophysiological studies on inflected, derived and compound words, so as to span over all types of complex words. The outcome of this work is an analytical summary of well-established facts on the most relevant morphological issues, such as regularity, morpheme position coding, family size, semantic transparency, morpheme frequency, suffix allomorphy and productivity, morphological entropy, and morpho-orthographic parsing. In discussing this set of benchmark effects, we have drawn some methodological considerations on why contrasting evidence might have emerged, and have tried to delineate a target list for the construction of a new all-inclusive model of the visual identification of morphologically complex words. \ua9 2012 Amenta and Crepaldi

Masked Morphological Priming and Sensitivity to the Statistical Structure of form-to-Meaning mapping in L2

In one’s native language, visual word identification is based on early morphological analysis and is sensitive to the statistical structure of the mapping between form and meaning (Orthography–to–Semantic Consistency, OSC). How these mechanisms apply to a second language is much less clear. We recruited L1 Italian-L2 English speakers for a masked priming task where the relationship between prime and target was morphologically transparent, e.g., employer–EMPLOY, morphologically opaque, e.g., corner-CORN, or merely orthographic, e.g., brothel–BROTH. Critically, participants underwent thorough testing of their lexical, morphological, phonological, spelling, and semantic proficiency in their second language. By exploring a wide spectrum of L2 proficiency, we showed that this factor critically qualifies L2 priming. Genuine morphological facilitation only arises as proficiency grows, while orthographic priming shrinks as L2 competence increases. OSC was also found to modulate priming and interact with proficiency, providing an alternative way of describing the transparency continuum in derivational morphology. Overall, these data illustrate the trajectory towards a fully consolidated L2 lexicon and show that masked priming and sensitivity to OSC are key trackers of this process

Augmented Modality Exclusivity Norms for Concrete and Abstract Italian Property Words

How perceptual information is encoded into language and conceptual knowledge is a debated topic in cognitive (neuro)science. We present modality norms for 643 Italian adjectives, which referred to one of the five perceptual modalities or were abstract. Overall, words were rated as mostly connected to the visual modality and least connected to the olfactory and gustatory modality. We found that words associated to visual and auditory experience were more unimodal compared to words associated to other sensory modalities. A principal components analysis highlighted a strong coupling between gustatory and olfactory information in word meaning, and the tendency of words referring to tactile experience to also include information from the visual dimension. Abstract words were found to encode only marginal perceptual information, mostly from visual and auditory experience. The modality norms were augmented with corpus-based (e.g., Zipf Frequency, Orthographic Levenshtein Distance 20) and ratings-based psycholinguistic variables (Age of Acquisition, Familiarity, Contextual Availability). Split-half correlations performed for each experimental variable and comparisons with similar databases confirmed that our norms are highly reliable. This database thus provides a new important tool for investigating the interplay between language, perception and cognition

The fruitless effort of growing a fruitless tree: Early morpho.orthographic and morpho-semantic effects in sentence reading

In this eye-tracking study, we investigated how semantics inform morphological analysis at the early stages of visual word identification in sentence reading. We exploited a feature of several derived Italian words, that is, that they can be read in a \u201cmorphologically transparent\u201d way or in a \u201cmorphologically opaque\u201d way according to the sentence context to which they belong. This way, each target word was embedded in a sentence eliciting either its transparent or opaque interpretation. We analyzed whether the effect of stem frequency changes according to whether the (very same) word is read as a genuine derivation (transparent context) vs. as a pseudo-derived word (opaque context). Analysis of the first fixation durations revealed a stem-word frequency effect in both opaque and transparent contexts, thus showing that stems were accessed whether or not they contributed to word meaning, that is, word decomposition is indeed blind to semantics. However, while the stem-word frequency effect was facilitatory in the transparent context, it was inhibitory in the opaque context, thus showing an early involvement of semantic representations. This pattern of data is revealed by words with short suffixes. These results indicate that derived and pseudo-derived words are segmented into their constituent morphemes also in natural reading; however, this blind- to-semantics process activates morpheme representations that are semantically connote

Food in the corner and money in the cashews: Semantic activation of embedded stems in the presence or absence of a morphological structure

In visual word identification, readers automatically access word internal information: they recognize orthographically embedded words (e.g., HAT in THAT) and are sensitive to morphological structure (DEAL\u2013ER, BASKET\u2013BALL). The exact mechanisms that govern these processes, however, are not well established yet \u2013 how is this information used? What is the role of affixes in this process? To address these questions, we tested the activation of meaning of embedded word stems in the presence or absence of a morphological structure using two semantic categorization tasks in Italian. Participants made category decisions on words (e.g., is CARROT a type of food?). Some no-answers (is CORNER a type of food?) contained category-congruent embedded word stems (i.e., CORN\u2013). Moreover, the embedded stems could be accompanied by a pseudo-suffix (-er in CORNER) or a non-morphological ending (-ce in PEACE) \u2013 this allowed gauging the role of pseudo-suffixes in stem activation. The analyses of accuracy and response times revealed that words were harder to reject as members of a category when they contained an embedded word stem that was indeed category-congruent. Critically, this was the case regardless of the presence or absence of a pseudo-suffix. These findings provide evidence that the lexical identification system activates the meaning of embedded word stems when the task requires semantic information. This study brings together research on orthographic neighbors and morphological processing, yielding results that have important implications for models of visual word processing

Morpheme Position Coding in Reading Development as Explored With a Letter Search Task

Suffixes have been shown to be recognized as units of processing in visual word recognition and their identification has been argued to be position-specific in skilled adult readers: in lexical decision tasks suffixes are automatically identified at word endings, but not at word beginnings. The present study set out to investigate whether position-specific coding can be detected with a letter search task and whether children already code suffixes as position-specific units. A preregistered experiment was conducted in Italian in which 3rd-graders, 5th-graders, and adults had to detect a target letter that was either contained in the suffix of a pseudoword (e.g., S in flagish ) or in a non-suffix control (e.g., S in flagosh ). To investigate sensitivity to position, letters also had to be detected in suffixes and non-suffixes placed in reversed position, that is in the beginning of pseudowords (e.g., S in ishflag vs. oshflag). Results suggested position-specific processing differences between suffixes and non-suffixes that develop throughout reading development. However, some effects were weak and only partially compatible with the hypotheses. Therefore, a second experiment was conducted. The effects of position-specific suffix identification could not be replicated. A combined analysis additionally using a Bayesian approach indicated no processing differences between suffixes and non-suffixes in our task. We discuss potential interpretations and the possibility of letter search being unsuited to investigate morpheme processing. We connect our example of failed self-replication to the current discussion about the replication crisis in psychology and the lesson psycholinguistics can learn

Processing differences across regular and irregular inflections revealed through ERPs

Research strongly suggests that printed words are recognized in terms of their constituent morphemes, but researchers have tended to consider the recognition of derivations and inflections in separate theoretical debates. Recently, Crepaldi et al. (2010) proposed a theory that claims to account for the recognition of both derivations and inflections. We investigated brain potentials in the context of masked priming to test two key predictions of this theory: (a) that regular inflections should prime their stems to a greater degree than irregular inflections should prime their stems; and (b) that priming for regular inflections should arise earlier in the recognition process than priming for irregular inflections. Significant masked priming effects were observed for both regular and irregular inflections, though these effects were greater for regular inflections. ERP data further suggested that masked priming effects for regular and irregular inflections had different time courses. Priming for regular but not irregular inflections emerged in a time window reflecting processing up to 250 ms post target onset, and while priming for regular and irregular inflections was observed in a time window reflecting processing 400-600 ms post target onset, these effects arose earlier and were of greater magnitude for the regular inflections. These findings support a form-then-meaning characterisation of the visual word processing system such as that proposed by Crepaldi et al. (2010) and raise challenges for alternative approache

Stepping out of the Chinese Room: Word meaning with and without consciousness

What is the role of consciousness in language processing? Unconscious priming experiments show that words can prime other words with related meanings (cat \u2013 dog), and these priming effects are assumed to reflect the activation of conceptual knowledge in semantic memory. Alternatively, however, unconscious priming effects could reflect predictive relationships between the words\u2019 forms, since words that are semantically related are also statistically related in language use. Therefore, unconscious \u201csemantic\u201d priming effects could be due to relationships between words\u2019 forms mimicking conceptual relationships, as in Searle\u2019s Chinese Room thought experiment. To distinguish wordform-based and semantics-based accounts of priming we conducted an experiment in which temporal words (e.g., earlier, later) were preceded by spatial words that were processed either consciously or unconsciously. Time is typically conceptualized as a spatial continuum extending along either the sagittal (front-back) or the lateral (left-right) axis, but only the sagittal space-time mapping is encoded in language (e.g. the future is ahead, not to the right). Results showed that temporal words were primed both by sagittal words (back, front) and lateral words (left, right) when primes were perceived consciously, as predicted by both wordformbased and semantics-based accounts. Yet, only sagittal words produced an unconscious priming effect, as predicted by the wordform-based account. Unconscious word processing appears to be limited to relationships between words\u2019 forms, and consciousness may be needed to activate words\u2019 meanings

Space and time in the sighted and blind

Across many cultures people conceptualize time as extending along a horizontal Mental Time Line (MTL). This spatial mapping of time has been shown to depend on experience with written text, and may also depend on other graphic conventions such as graphs and calendars. All of this information is typically acquired visually, suggesting that visual experience may play an important role in the development of the MTL. Do blind people develop a MTL? If so, how does it compare with the MTL in sighted? In this study we tested early blind, late blind and sighted participants in a space-time congruity task. Participants had to classify temporal words by pressing a right and a left key, either with crossed or uncrossed hands. We found that the MTL develops in the absence of vision, and that it is based on the same external frame of reference in sighted and blind people. Reading braille may provide the same experiential link between space and time in the manual modality as reading printed text provides in the visual modality. These results showing a similar MTL in sighted and blind participants contrast with previous results showing that the Mental Number Line (MNL) depends on different spatial coordinates in the sighted and the blind, and suggest that spatial representations of time and number may have different experiential bases

Algorithms for the automated correction of vertical drift in eye-tracking data

A common problem in eye tracking research is vertical drift\u2014the progressive displacement of fixation registrations on the vertical axis that results from a gradual loss of eye tracker calibration over time. This is particularly problematic in experiments that involve the reading of multiline passages, where it is critical that fixations on one line are not erroneously recorded on an adjacent line. Correction is often performed manually by the researcher, but this process is tedious, time-consuming, and prone to error and inconsistency. Various methods have previously been proposed for the automated, post-hoc correction of vertical drift in reading data, but these methods vary greatly, not just in terms of the algorithmic principles on which they are based, but also in terms of their availability, documentation, implementation languages, and so forth. Furthermore, these methods have largely been developed in isolation with little attempt to systematically evaluate them, meaning that drift correction techniques are moving forward blindly. We document ten major algorithms, including two that are novel to this paper, and evaluate them using both simulated and natural eye tracking data. Our results suggest that a method based on dynamic time warping offers great promise, but we also find that some algorithms are better suited than others to particular types of drift phenomena and reading behavior, allowing us to offer evidence-based advice on algorithm selection