Transposed-letter priming effect in Hebrew in the same–different task

Abstract

We investigated the interaction between morphological structure and transposed-letter priming using the same–different task with Hebrew, a Semitic language in which morphology has been shown to play a key role in visual word recognition. In contrast to the results observed with lexical decision (e.g., Velan & Frost, 2009, 2011), a transposed-letter priming effect was observed irrespective of the morphological structure of the words. We take these results to suggest that morphological decomposition occurs only in the service of lexical access. We discuss further a unique feature of written Arabic, another Semitic language, to explain the apparent conflict between our findings and those reported by Perea, Abu Mallouh, García-Orza, and Carreiras (2010).

Keywords:

• Letter position coding
• Transposed-letter priming
• Morphology
• Orthography
• Hebrew
• Arabic

Acknowledgments

The experiment reported in this paper arose out of a discussion between Sachiko Kinoshita, Ram Frost, and Manolo Perea at the Psychonomics hospitality session in November 2010. We are grateful to Ram Frost for agreeing to conduct the experiment in Hebrew. We would also like to thank Sami Boudelaa, whose expertise in Arabic was invaluable.

Notes

¹ Perea, Abu-Mallouh, Garcia-Orza, and Carreiras (2010) used Arabic, another language with Semitic morphology, and reported finding the same pattern of modulation of TL priming by morphological structure in the same–different task as has been found in the lexical decision task (Perea, Abu-Mallouh, & Carreiras, 2010). One important feature of written Arabic that differs from written Hebrew is the extensive position-dependent allography. We discuss the implication of position-dependent allography for TL priming manipulation in the Discussion.

² The large lexicality effect here contrasts with the weak or absent lexicality effect typically found in the sequential same–different match task. This is probably due to the fact that in unpointed Hebrew in which vowels are not represented—the script standardly used in most reading material and the one used here—there is greater ambiguity regarding the identity of a nonword than the identity of a word. Note that nonwords showed robust priming effects, indicating that the main effect of lexicality does not compromise the interpretation that priming was based on prelexical orthographic representations.