Reading derivationally affixed french words

Abstract The recognition of multimorphemic French words was investigated using a procedure that allowed the position of first fixation of the eye to be manipulated and gaze durations to be recorded. The results of Experiment 1 indicated that prefixed and suffixed words were recognised most rapidly when the eye started at points at which the words' stem could be seen distinctly. In Experiment 2, gaze durations for prefixed words equated for surface frequency were longer for words with low-frequency rather than high-frequency stems. The findings support the idea that complex words are accessed in terms of their stem, and that the order in which affixes are listed in an entry is determined by the surface frequency of the entire word formed by the stem plus affix. Alternative accounts of the findings were considered.

[1]  J. Segui,et al.  On the representation and processing of prefixed and suffixed derived words: A differential frequency effect , 1989 .

[2]  M. Coltheart.  Lexical access in simple reading tasks , 1978 .

[3]  C. A. Becker,et al.  Morphological structure and its effect on visual word recognition , 1979 .

[4]  R. Jackendoff.  Morphological and semantic regularities in the lexicon , 1975 .

[5]  W. Marslen-Wilson,et al.  Continuous and discontinuous access in spoken word-recognition: The role of derivational prefixes , 1988 .

[6]  James L. McClelland,et al.  A distributed, developmental model of word recognition and naming. , 1989, Psychological review.

[7]  B. J. Winer.  Statistical Principles in Experimental Design , 1992 .

[8]  Philip T. Smith,et al.  Factors affecting the perceived morphenic structure of written words , 1982 .

[9]  M. Taft.  Recognition of affixed words and the word frequency effect , 1979, Memory & cognition.

[10]  James L. McClelland,et al.  An interactive activation model of context effects in letter perception: I. An account of basic findings. , 1981 .

[11]  J. Grainger.  Word frequency and neighborhood frequency effects in lexical decision and naming. , 1990 .

[12]  K. Forster,et al.  Lexical storage and retrieval of prefixed words , 1975 .

[13]  S. Andrews.  Frequency and neighborhood effects on lexical access: Activation or search? , 1989 .

[14]  S. Andrews.  Morphological influences on lexical access: Lexical or nonlexical effects? , 1986 .

[15]  J. O'Regan,et al.  Convenient fixation location within isolated words of different length and structure. , 1984, Journal of experimental psychology. Human perception and performance.

[16]  Robert Schreuder,et al.  Morphological constraints on word recognition. , 1987 .

[17]  Andrea Tyler,et al.  Use of derivational morphology during reading , 1990, Cognition.

[18]  A. Caramazza,et al.  Lexical access and inflectional morphology , 1988, Cognition.

[19]  Arthur M. Jacobs,et al.  The effect of visibility on eye-movement parameters in reading , 1983, Perception & psychophysics.

[20]  K. Rayner.  Eye Guidance in Reading: Fixation Locations within Words , 1979, Perception.

[21]  M. Taft.  Prefix Stripping Revisited. , 1981 .

[22]  V. M. Holmes,et al.  DECOMPOSING FRENCH WORDS , 1987 .

[23]  Max Coltheart,et al.  Access to the internal lexicon , 1977 .

[24]  Alfonso Caramazza,et al.  Representation and processing of derived words , 1987 .

[25]  K. Forster,et al.  Lexical storage and retrieval of polymorphemic and polysyllabic words. , 1976 .

[26]  M. Turvey,et al.  Representation of inflected nouns in the internal lexicon , 1980, Memory & cognition.

[27]  S. M. Chambers.  Letter and order information in lexical access , 1979 .

[28]  Mark S. Seidenberg.  Reading Complex Words , 1989 .

[29]  Mark S. Seidenberg,et al.  Sublexical structures in visual word recognition: Access units or orthographic redundancy? , 1987 .

[30]  A. Roelofs,et al.  The identification of morphologically complex spoken words: continuous processing or decomposition? , 1991 .

[31]  Leslie Henderson,et al.  On mental representation of morphology and its diagnosis by measures of visual access speed , 1989 .

[32]  A. Jacobs,et al.  On the role of competing word units in visual word recognition: The neighborhood frequency effect , 1989, Perception & psychophysics.