Breaking boundaries: Letter transpositions and morphological processing

Abstract

We tested the predictions of a dual-route model of complex word reading according to which morpho-orthographic segmentation is hypothesised to require a fine-grained orthographic code that would be particularly sensitive to letter order, whereas morpho-semantic representations are hypothesised to be most rapidly accessed via a coarse-grained orthographic code that is less sensitive to letter order. We predicted that letter transpositions would disrupt morpho-orthographic processing more than morpho-semantic processing. In line with these predictions, Experiment 1 showed no priming from opaque pseudo-derived primes containing a letter transposition at the morpheme boundary (masetr-mast) relative to replaced letter controls (masicr-mast) in the presence of significant priming from transposed-letter transparent derived primes (banekr-bank). Similarly, Experiment 2 showed that although complex nonword primes (bankity-bank) generate significant priming effects relative to unrelated primes (farmity-bank), the same primes with letter transpositions (banikty-bank) do not prime relative to transposed unrelated primes (farimty-bank).

Keywords:

• Morphological priming
• Transposed letters
• Semantic transparency

Acknowledgements

Jonathan Grainger and Daisy Bertrand were supported by ERC grant 230313.

Notes

¹The model was estimated using treatment coding for the factors. Hence, the individual interaction terms provide tests of the comparisons between individual levels in the 3×3 design. In order to evaluate all comparisons, we refitted the model six times, each time choosing a different reference level in the treatment coding of Item Type and Prime Type. p-values were corrected for multiple testing following Benjamini and Hochberg (1995).