Seeing Ring in Rang and Retain in Retention: On Recognizing Stem Morphemes in Printed Words.

Subjects judged whether pairs of words viewed simultaneously contained the same stem morpheme. Reaction times of same-different judgments were obtained for verb stems paired with inflected forms of the verbs (Experiment I) and for verb stems paired with derived adjectives and nouns (Experiment II). Same judgments were faster than different judgments in both studies, and were faster when the stem was spelled in the same way in both words, regardless of pronunciation, than when it was spelled and pronounced differently.