Semantic aspects of morphological processing: transparency effects in Serbian.

Full Abstract

We examined the contribution of semantics to morphological facilitation in the visual lexical decision task at two stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs) with Serbian materials. Primes appeared in Roman or Cyrillic characters. Targets always were printed in Roman. When primes were presented at an SOA of 250 msec, decision latencies to verbal targets (e.g., VOLIM) showed greatest facilitation after inflectionally (e.g., VOLE) related primes, significantly less after semantically transparent derived primes (e.g., ZAVOLE), and less again after semantically opaque derived primes (e.g., PREVOLE). Latencies after semantically transparent and opaque derived target words did not differ at an SOA of 48 msec. Both were slower than after inflectionally related primes. Stated generally, effects of semantic transparency among derivationally related verb forms were evident at long SOAs, but not at short ones. Under alphabet-alternating conditions, magnitudes of facilitation were greater overall, but the pattern was similar. The outcome suggests that restricted processing time for the prime limits the contribution of semantics to morphological processing and calls into question accounts that posit a task-invariant semantic criterion for morphological decomposition within the lexicon.

Learn Faster Today Improve your study skills

Author information

Author/s: Feldman, Laurie Beth (LB); Barac-Cikoja, Dragana (D); Kostic, Aleksandar (A);

Affiliation: State University of New York, Albany, USA. lf503@albany.edu

Grants: HD-01994 (Agency:United States NICHD)

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Journal Article; Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't; Research Support, U.S. Gov't, P.H.S.

Journal: Memory & cognition (Mem Cognit), published in United States. (Language: eng)

Reference: 2002-Jun; vol 30 (issue 4) : pp 629-36

Dates: Created 2002/08/19; Completed 2002/09/11; Revised 2007/11/14;

PMID: 12184564, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 11/6/2008)

Sourced from the National Library of Medicine. Abstract text and other information may be subject to copyright.

External Links for this article (including full text providers, if available):

Click Electronic Full-text Provider Links to see options for finding the electronic full text links to this article. Note there may be a subscription or fee required for access to the full text. See our FAQ for information on finding FREE full text articles.

This article may also be located in paper journal collections available in many libraries. Use the Journal and Publication Information above to find the full article.

MeSH headings (categories)

This article was linked to the MESH Headings shown below.

This article has not been indexed for related articles as yet, however you can still use the live related article search links below.

See 100+ related articles.