Does darkness lead to happiness? Masked suffix priming effects

Abstract

Masked affix priming effects have usually been obtained for words sharing the initial affix (e.g., re action- RE FORM). However, prior evidence on masked suffix priming effects (e.g., bak er -WALK ER ) is inconclusive. In the present series of masked priming lexical decision experiments, a target word was briefly preceded by a morphologically or orthographically related prime, or by an unrelated prime. In Experiment 1, the prime words in the suffix priming condition were formed by their suffixes (e.g., er -WALK ER ). In Experiment 2, the primes included the suffix inserted in a nonsense symbol string (e.g., %%%% er -WALK ER ). In Experiment 3, the primes were formed by a real word that shared the suffix with the target (e.g., bak er -WALK ER ). The results showed that, when compared with an orthographic priming condition, masked suffix priming can be obtained independently of the degree of segmentation of the prime. Furthermore, the present experiments reveal a clear dissociation between orthographic priming and morphological priming.

Keywords:

• Derivational morphology
• Morphological priming
• Orthographic priming
• Suffixes

Acknowledgements

This research has been partially supported by Grants SEJ2004-07680-C02-02/PSIC, SEJ2006-09238/PSIC and SEJ2005-05205/EDU from the Spanish Government, and BFI05.310 from the Basque Government. The authors thank Jonathan Grainger and an anonymous reviewer for their comments on an earlier draft. Thanks are also due to Margaret Gillon-Dowens for her priceless patience.

Notes

¹The affix boundary refers to the last letter of a root morpheme and the initial of a suffix for suffixed words, and the final letter of the prefix and the initial of the root morpheme for prefixed words (i.e., wal ke r or r ev iew).

²We should note that Forster and Azuma (2000), in an English masked priming experiment (50 ms stimulus-onset asynchrony), found significant masked orthographic priming effects when the shared letters were the ending chunks of the words (e.g., sha llow -FO LLOW ). Considering that their manipulation is similar to the one we have employed in our Experiment 3 (e.g., volu men -CERTA MEN ), one would have expected some orthographic priming to emerge in our experiment. However, there is a key difference between the two studies regarding the amount of shared letters between prime and target words. An analysis on Forster and Azuma's materials reveals that they used word pairs that shared 66% of the letters. In Experiment 3, the percentage of shared letters is smaller (42%). In a masked priming paradigm, this can be a substantial difference that could have resulted in the orthographic priming effect in their experiment.