Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jul 29, 2026

A Semantic Priming Event-related Potential (ERP) Task to Study Lexico-semantic and Visuo-semantic Processing in Autism Spectrum Disorder
Published on: April 12, 2018
Morphological priming in the German mental lexicon
I Sonnenstuhl1, S Eisenbeiss, H Clahsen
1Department of Linguistics, University of Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf, Germany.
Abstract:
We present results from cross-modal priming experiments on German participles and noun plurals. The experiments produced parallel results for both inflectional systems. Regular inflection exhibits full priming whereas irregularly inflected word forms show only partial priming: after hearing regularly inflected words (-t participles and -s plurals), lexical decision times on morphologically related word forms (presented visually) were similar to reaction times for a base-line condition in which prime and target were identical, but significantly shorter than in a control condition where prime and target were unrelated. In contrast, prior presentation of irregular words (-n participles and -er plurals) led to significantly longer response times on morphologically related word forms than the prior presentation of the target itself. Hence, there are clear priming differences between regularly and irregularly inflected German words. We compare the findings on German with experimental results on regular and irregular inflection in English and Italian, and discuss theoretical implications for single versus dual-mechanism models of inflection.
More Related Videos
Related Concept Videos
Gestalt Principles of Perception
Concepts and Prototypes
The brain organizes this information using concepts, which are mental categories grouping linguistic data,...
Language and Cognition
Implicit Memories
One key aspect of implicit...
Mnemonic Devices
Acronyms
Acronyms are created by using the initial letters of a series of words to form a new word or phrase. This approach condenses complex information into a single, memorable entity. For example,...
Automatic Processing and Automatic Social Behavior

