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Updated: Jul 7, 2026

Eye Tracking During Visually Situated Language Comprehension: Flexibility and Limitations in Uncovering Visual Context Effects
Published on: November 30, 2018
What do graded effects of semantic transparency reveal about morphological processing?
Laurie Beth Feldman1, Emily G Soltano, Matthew J Pastizzo
1University of Albany, State University of New York, 12222, USA. lf503@albany.edu
Abstract:
We examined the influence of semantic transparency on morphological facilitation in English in three lexical decision experiments. Decision latencies to visual targets (e.g., CASUALNESS) were faster after semantically transparent (e.g., CASUALLY) than semantically opaque (e.g., CASUALTY) primes whether primes were auditory and presented immediately before onset of the target (Experiment 1a) or visual with an stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) of 250 ms (Experiment 1b). Latencies did not differ at an SOA of 48 ms (Experiment 2) or with a forward mask at an SOA of 83 ms (Experiment 3). Generally, effects of semantic transparency among morphological relatives were evident at long but not at short SOAs with visual targets, regardless of prime modality. Moreover, the difference in facilitation after opaque and transparent primes was graded and increased with family size of the base morpheme.
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