Department of Psychology, Washington University in St. Louis, MO 63130, United States.
Cognition. 2013 Mar;126(3):397-404. doi: 10.1016/j.cognition.2012.11.009. Epub 2013 Jan 2.
The present research examined whether lexical (whole word) or more rule-based (morphological constituent) processes can be locally biased by experimental list context in past tense verb inflection. In Experiment 1, younger and older adults completed a past tense inflection task in which list context was manipulated across blocks containing regular past tense verbs (e.g. REACH-REACHED) or irregular past tense verbs (TEACH-TAUGHT). Critical targets, consisting of half regular and half irregular verbs, were embedded within blocks and participants' inflection response latency and accuracy were assessed. The results yielded a cross-over interaction in response latencies for both young and older adults. In the regular context there was a robust regularity effect: regular target verbs were conjugated faster than irregular target verbs. In contrast, in the irregular context, irregular target verbs were conjugated faster than regular target verbs. Experiment 2 used the same targets but in the context of either standard nonwords or nonwords ending in "-ED" to test the possibility of a phonological basis for the effect. The effect of context was eliminated. The results support the notion that distinct processes in past tense verb production can be locally biased by list context and, as shown in Experiment 2, this route priming effect was not due to phonological priming.
本研究考察了在过去时动词屈折中，词汇（整体单词）或更基于规则的（形态成分）过程是否可以被实验列表上下文局部偏向。在实验 1 中，年轻和年长的成年人完成了过去时屈折任务，其中列表上下文在包含规则过去时动词（例如 REACH-REACHED）或不规则过去时动词（TEACH-TAUGHT）的块中进行了操纵。关键目标由一半规则动词和一半不规则动词组成，嵌入在块中，评估参与者的屈折反应时和准确性。结果在年轻人和老年人的反应时上产生了交叉相互作用。在规则的上下文中，存在强大的规则效应：规则目标动词的屈折比不规则目标动词快。相比之下，在不规则的上下文中，不规则目标动词的屈折比规则目标动词快。实验 2 使用了相同的目标，但在标准的非词或非词以“-ED”结尾的上下文中，以测试该效应是否基于语音。上下文的影响被消除了。结果支持了这样一种观点，即在过去时动词产生中，不同的过程可以被列表上下文局部偏向，并且，如实验 2 所示，这种途径启动效应不是由于语音启动。
