In three experiments we compared the performance of native English speakers to that of Spanish-English and Dutch-English bilinguals on a masked morphological priming lexical decision task. The results do not show significant differences across the three experiments. In line with recent meta-analyses, we observed a graded pattern of facilitation across stem priming with transparent suffixed primes (e.g., viewer-view), opaque suffixed or pseudo-suffixed primes (e.g., corner-corn) and form control primes (e.g., freeze-free). Priming was largest in the transparent condition, smallest in the form condition and intermediate in the opaque condition. Our data confirm the hypothesis that bilinguals largely adopt the same processing strategies as native speakers (e.g., Lemhöfer et al., 2008), and constrain the hypothesis that bilinguals rely more heavily on whole-word processing in their second language (Ullman, 2004(Ullman, , 2005Clahsen et al., 2010). The observed pattern of morphological priming is in line with earlier monolingual studies, further highlighting the reality of semantic transparency effects in the initial stages of word recognition.

This study investigated the validity and reliability of the Suicidal Intent Scale as a measure of the seriousness of a suicide attempt. 194 completed suicides had higher scores on the scale than 231 attempters (nonfatal). In addition, 19 atternp:ers who reattempted suicide within 1 yr. of discharge had greater suicidal intent than attempters who did not.Assessment of suicidal intent is an important key for understanding and approaching the problem of attempted (nonfatal) suicide. The Suicidal Intent Scale (Beck, Herman, & Schuyler, 1973) was developed to utilize information about an individual's attempt in order to assess its seriousness and analyze s u b sequent suicidal risk. This study presents validation of the scale through a comparison of cases of completed suicide, of attempted (nonfatal) suicide, and of repeated attempted suicide.Reliability and validity studies have been previously reported by Beck, et al. & Marcus, 1971). Interrater reliability for 45 attempted suicides was .95 .The "attempter" sample of 231 patients was admitted to one of two participating Philadelphia hospitals as a result of a suicide attempt in 1971-1973.All Ss were ~nterviewed by our research team. The "repeater" sample was composed of 19 patients who reattempted suicide within 1 yr. of discharge from the hospital. The "completer" sample included 194 suicides in Philadelphia County in 1972 whose case files were analyzed at the medical examiner's office. A Suicidal Intent Scale was filled out for each attempter and completer. The complete scale is a 15-item survey of two parts: Items 1 to 8 cover objective circumstances of the attempt (e.g., isolation, precautions against discovery, suicide note); Items 9 to 15 report 5"s intentions and expectations regarding the attempt. All items are scored on a 0-1-2 scale of severity and summed. The total score range is 0 to 30. Since only Items 1 to 8 could be scored for completed suicides, the comparison of arcemprers and completers employs only the first parc of the scale.In the presenr study, the interrater reliability for the first parc of the scale by two experienced raters was .91 for 25 completed suicides. The 194 completed suicides had a significantly higher mean score on Items 1 to 8 than the 231 attempters: 7.68 and 5.73 respectively ( t

The role of semantics in the segmentation of morphologically complex words was examined using event-related potentials (ERPs) recorded to target words primed by semantically transparent (hunter-hunt,) opaque (corner-corn), and orthographically related (scandal-scan) masked primes. Behavioral data showed that only transparent items gave rise to priming. The ERP data showed both N250 and the N400 effects with transparent items generating greater priming than orthographic or opaque. Furthermore, priming effects across conditions revealed the existence of a significant linear trend, with transparent items showing the greatest effects and orthographic items the smallest, suggesting that these priming effects vary as a function of morphological structure and semantic transparency. The results are discussed in terms of a model of morphological processing.

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This experiment examined event-related responses to targets preceded by semantically transparent morphologically related primes (e.g., farmer-farm), semantically opaque primes with an apparent morphological relation (cornercorn), and orthographically, but not morphologically, related primes (scandalscan) using the masked priming technique combined with a semantic categorisation task. In order to provide information about possible early effects of morphology we focused our analysis on the N250 ERP component. Priming effects for transparent and opaque items patterned together in the early phase of the N250 (200-250 ms), whereas the transparent and orthographic items patterned together in the latter phase of this component (250-300 ms). These results provide further evidence in support of the rapid extraction of morphemes from morphologically complex stimuli independently of the semantic relatedness of the whole and its parts.