Studies of Morphology in Visual Word Recognition with Differing Prime Exposures

The present work deals with two opposing positions on the role of morphology in word processing. Some argue that morphological relationships are simply a convergence of orthographic (formal) and semantic (meaning) relationships (Gonnerman & Seidenberg 2007). An alternative view suggests an independent role for morphology beyond semantics and orthography. These views have tested by behavioral or electrophysiological measures in masked priming paradigms. Masked priming presents participants with a brief prime word sandwiched between a pattern mask (e.g. #####) and a target word displayed for a considerably longer period. A recent study conducted by Royle et. al. (under review) compared morphological, semantic, and orthographic prime-TARGET pairs in French. These pairs were presented in a masked priming paradigm and measured using event-related brain potentials (ERPs). ERPs are patterns of voltage change gathered by averaging continuous brain activity by electroencephalography (EEG). Royle et. al. found that in the absence of semantic facilitation, orthographic and morphological relationships differed significantly from one another. This suggests that morphology is not simply a combination of semantics and orthography. This paper investigates previous works on the roles that morphology plays in processing and presents a detailed three-part program through which the temporal dynamics of the processing of inflectional morphology in visual word recognition could be analyzed. Two of the three experiments manipulate whether the participant is primed with an orthographic, morphological, or semantic prime and the duration of the priming. These two experiments would provide data to demonstrate the effects of morphology on processing independent of orthography and semantics. The third experiment would compare the effects of morphological primes on processing to the effects of primes that match the target in semantics and orthography but not derivational or inflectional morphology (boat-FLOAT). All three experiments also include a manipulation of prime duration and observe the change in effects of primes at differing prime durations. The experiments provide means for determining the role of morphology in processing and the times at which these processes come online.