During visual word processing readers identify chunks of co-occurring letters and code for their typical position within words. Using an artificial script, we examined whether these phenomena can be explained by the ability to extract visual regularities from the environment. Participants were first familiarized with a lexicon of pseudoletter strings, each comprising an affix-like chunk that either followed (Experiment 1) or preceded (Experiment 2) a random character sequence. In the absence of any linguistic information, chunks could be defined only by their statistical properties - similarly to affixes in the real language, chunks occurred frequently and assumed a specific position within strings. In a later testing phase, we found that participants were more likely to attribute a previously unseen string to the familiarization lexicon if it contained an affix, and if the affix appeared in its typical position. Importantly, these findings suggest that readers may chunk words using a general, language-agnostic cognitive mechanism that captures statistical regularities in the learning materials. Keywords
Morphemes as letter chunks: Discovering affixes through visual regularities / Lelonkiewicz, Jarosław R.; Ktori, Maria; Crepaldi, Davide. - In: JOURNAL OF MEMORY AND LANGUAGE. - ISSN 0749-596X. - 115:(2020), pp. 1-44. [10.1016/j.jml.2020.104152]
Morphemes as letter chunks: Discovering affixes through visual regularities
Ktori, Maria;Crepaldi, Davide
2020-01-01
Abstract
During visual word processing readers identify chunks of co-occurring letters and code for their typical position within words. Using an artificial script, we examined whether these phenomena can be explained by the ability to extract visual regularities from the environment. Participants were first familiarized with a lexicon of pseudoletter strings, each comprising an affix-like chunk that either followed (Experiment 1) or preceded (Experiment 2) a random character sequence. In the absence of any linguistic information, chunks could be defined only by their statistical properties - similarly to affixes in the real language, chunks occurred frequently and assumed a specific position within strings. In a later testing phase, we found that participants were more likely to attribute a previously unseen string to the familiarization lexicon if it contained an affix, and if the affix appeared in its typical position. Importantly, these findings suggest that readers may chunk words using a general, language-agnostic cognitive mechanism that captures statistical regularities in the learning materials. KeywordsFile | Dimensione | Formato | |
---|---|---|---|
post-print_Lelonkiewicz et al_2020_J of Memory&Language.pdf
non disponibili
Descrizione: postprint
Tipologia:
Documento in Post-print
Licenza:
Non specificato
Dimensione
1.09 MB
Formato
Adobe PDF
|
1.09 MB | Adobe PDF | Visualizza/Apri Richiedi una copia |
I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.