MORPHOLOGICAL STRUCTURE IN VISUAL WORD RECOGNITION - EVIDENCE FROM PREFIXED AND SUFFIXED WORDS

Two experiments are reported that investigate whether the visual recognition of short prefixed and suffixed words is affected by their morphological structure. A contrast display procedure that emphasised morphemic or non-morphemic units at the beginning and the end of affixed and pseudoaffixed words was used to investigate the pertinence of these units in the recognition process. The results show that encoding times are sensitive to the lexical status of the unit. A significant benefit only occurred when the subword unit corresponded to the stem. The same results were observed in a second experiment in which it was shown that the effectiveness of the stem in the recognition process does not depend on its position at the beginning (for suffixed words) or the end (for prefixed words) of affixed words. The results provide support for the pertinence of the stem as a reading unit for prefixed as well as for suffixed words.