Pupillary Responses to Pseudowords With Different Morphological and Imageability Features

Abstract

In this study, we explored the role of morphology and imageability in pseudoword processing while recording pupillary responses in a lexical decision task that included polymorphemic (“footbalist”), suffixed (“smopify”), and simple pseudowords (“gresmor”), which also varied in imageability. The behavioral results of the mixed-model analyses showed longer latencies and higher error rates for highly imageable polymorphemic pseudowords relative to suffixed pseudowords. Suffixed pseudowords also generated longer latencies than simple pseudowords. The effect of imageability reached significance in these comparisons. With respect to the physiological data, significant differences emerged in the peak latencies between polymorphemic and the other two types of pseudowords, simple and suffixed. Overall findings were interpreted to index processing costs associated with the inhibition of word-like responses in morphological pseudowords while highlighting the intrinsic relationship between morphological and semantic processing. Physiological results allow us to associate for the first-time changes in the pupils to pseudowords processing.