Morphological processing during visual word recognition in developing readers: Evidence from masked priming

• DOI: 10.1080/17470218.2012.656661
• Publication Date: 2012-04-25T09:49:59Z
• Authors: Elisabeth Beyersmann; Anne Castles; Max Coltheart
• Keywords: Priming (agriculture); Orthography; Repetition priming

Masked priming studies with adult readers have provided evidence for a form-based morpho-orthographic segmentation mechanism that “blindly” decomposes any word the appearance of morphological complexity. The present investigated whether structural decomposition can be obtained developing readers. We used masked primed lexical decision design first adopted by Rastle, Davis, and New (2004), comparing truly suffixed ( golden–GOLD) pseudosuffixed mother–MOTH) prime–target pairs nonsuffixed controls spinach–SPIN). Experiment 1 tested readers, showing from both pseudo- primes could using our own set high-frequency materials. 2 assessed group Year 3 5 children, but only occurred when prime target shared true relationship, not relationship was pseudomorphological. This pattern results indicates mechanisms do become automatized until relatively late stage in reading development.