Surviving blind decomposition: A distributional analysis of the time-course of complex word recognition.

Abstract

The current study addresses a discrepancy in the psycholinguistic literature about the chronology of information processing during the visual recognition of morphologically complex words. Form-thenmeaning accounts of complex word recognition claim that morphemes are processed as units of form prior to any influence of their meanings, whereas form-and-meaning models posit that recognition of complex word forms involves the simultaneous access of morphological and semantic information.The study reported here addresses this theoretical discrepancy by applying a non-parametric distributional technique of survival analysis (Reingold & Sheridan, 2014) to two behavioural measures of complex word processing. Across seven experiments reported here, this technique is employed to estimate the point in time at which orthographic, morphological and semantic variables exert their earliest discernible influence on lexical decision reaction times and eye movement fixation durations. Contrary to form-then-meaning predictions, Experiments 1-4 reveal that surface frequency is the earliest lexical variable to exert a demonstrable influence on lexical decision reaction times for English and Dutch derived words (e.g., badness; bad + -ness), English pseudo-derived words (e.g., wander; wand + -er) and morphologically simple control words (e.g., ballad; ball + -ad). Furthermore, for derived word processing across lexical decision and eye-tracking paradigms (Experiments 1-2; 5-7), semantic effects emerge early in the time-course of word recognition, and their effects either precede or emerge simultaneously with morphological effects. These results are not consistent with the premises of the form-then-meaning view of complex word recognition, but are convergent with a form-and-meaning account of complex word recognition.

Perceptual salience of derivational suffixes in visual word recognition

“…The results obtained for first fixation duration reveal a significant effect of word frequency, which coincides with the findings of Amenta et al () and Kuperman, Bertram et al , (). This, together with the effect of perceptual salience of suffixes, corroborates the dual route model approach in which the system simultaneously computes both lexical (frequency) and formal (perceptual salience of suffixes) information at an early stage (see Schmidtke, Matsuki & Kuperman, ). We support this theory because we consider that the effect of the perceptual salience of suffixes implies morpho‐orthographic segmentation in lexical access.…”

“…This interpretation is not based on a serial model by which a first step (lexical access) is completely done before a second step (morphosyntactic processing) is carried out. On the contrary, we consider reading as a complex task in which different information enables the reader in a highly interactive and dynamic way (Marelli & Luzzati, ; Schmidtke, et al , ). However, it does not imply that all information entailed in a word or groups of words is able at the same time or has the same role for everyone in course processing.…”

Showcasing the interaction of generative and emergent linguistic knowledge with case marker omission in spoken Japanese

“…This result is consistent with Ullman's claim that declarative memory and procedural memory compete, with declarative memory preempting procedural memory for the most disperse expressions. This result is also consistent with recent studies in morphology (Schmidtke et al 2017;Lõo et al 2018) showing that frequency (i.e., declarative knowledge) impacts morphological processing sooner than morphological factors (i.e., procedural knowledge).…”

“…Nevertheless, the concept of parallel processing routes working at different speeds has been supported by recent work in morphology (Schmidtke et al 2017;Lõo et al 2018), and it is this aspect of Ullman's model that we test in this paper. Schmidtke et al (2017) conducted a series of lexical decision and eye movement experiments on English and Dutch morphologically derived (teach + er), pseudo derived (corn + er), and simple words.…”

“…Nevertheless, the concept of parallel processing routes working at different speeds has been supported by recent work in morphology (Schmidtke et al 2017;Lõo et al 2018), and it is this aspect of Ullman's model that we test in this paper. Schmidtke et al (2017) conducted a series of lexical decision and eye movement experiments on English and Dutch morphologically derived (teach + er), pseudo derived (corn + er), and simple words. They measured a variety of frequency, morphological, orthographic, and semantic variables, and then used a statistical technique called survival analysis to determine the earliest point in time at which a given variable exerts an influence over their response variables (judgment reaction times and eye fixation durations).…”