Semantic transparency affects morphological priming . . . eventually.

Area of Science:

• Psycholinguistics
• Morphological Processing
• Cognitive Science

Background:

• The processing of morphologically complex words and the role of semantic transparency remain debated.
• Understanding the time course of morpho-semantic information application is crucial for psycholinguistic models.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate how semantic transparency affects morphological priming in English and Russian nominalizations.
• To examine the time course of semantic information's influence using varying stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs).

Main Methods:

• Two masked priming experiments were conducted using English '-ness' and Russian '-ost'' nominalizations.
• Participants' morphological priming effects were measured at short and long SOAs for transparent and opaque words.

Main Results:

• Increased morphological priming was observed for transparent nominalizations (e.g., paleness-pale) compared to opaque ones (e.g., business-busy) in both languages.
• This effect was significant only at longer prime durations, not at short SOAs.

Conclusions:

• Findings support models positing an initial morpho-orthographic decomposition phase that is semantically blind.
• The results indicate that semantic information becomes influential after an initial stage of word decomposition.