Dawson Nicola, Rastle Kathleen, Ricketts Jessie
Department of Psychology.
J Exp Psychol Learn Mem Cogn. 2018 Apr;44(4):645-654. doi: 10.1037/xlm0000485. Epub 2017 Sep 28.
The process by which morphologically complex words are recognized and stored is a matter of ongoing debate. A large body of evidence indicates that complex words are automatically decomposed during visual word recognition in adult readers. Research with developing readers is limited and findings are mixed. This study aimed to investigate morphological decomposition in visual word recognition using cross-sectional data. Participants (33 adults, 36 older adolescents [16 to 17 years], 37 younger adolescents [12 to 13 years], and 50 children [7 to 9 years]) completed a timed lexical-decision task comprising 120 items (60 nonwords and 60 real word fillers). Half the nonwords contained a real stem combined with a real suffix (pseudomorphemic nonwords, e.g., earist); the other half used the same stems combined with a nonmorphological ending (control nonwords, e.g., earilt). All age groups were less accurate in rejecting pseudomorphemic nonwords than control nonwords. Adults and older adolescents were also slower to reject pseudomorphemic nonwords compared with control nonwords, but this effect did not emerge for the younger age groups. These findings demonstrate that, like adults, children and adolescents are sensitive to morphological structure in online visual word processing, but that some important changes occur over the course of adolescence. (PsycINFO Database Record
形态复杂的单词是如何被识别和存储的，这一过程仍在争论之中。大量证据表明，在成年读者的视觉单词识别过程中，复杂单词会自动被分解。针对成长中的读者的研究有限，且结果不一。本研究旨在使用横断面数据调查视觉单词识别中的形态分解。参与者（33名成年人、36名年龄较大的青少年[16至17岁]、37名年龄较小的青少年[12至13岁]和50名儿童[7至9岁]）完成了一项限时词汇判断任务，该任务包含120个项目（60个非单词和60个真实单词填充项）。一半的非单词包含一个真实词干和一个真实后缀（假词素非单词，例如earist）；另一半使用相同的词干与非形态学结尾组合（对照非单词，例如earilt）。所有年龄组在拒绝假词素非单词方面的准确率都低于对照非单词。与对照非单词相比，成年人和年龄较大的青少年拒绝假词素非单词的速度也较慢，但这种效应在较年轻的年龄组中并未出现。这些发现表明，与成年人一样，儿童和青少年在在线视觉单词处理中对形态结构敏感，但在青春期会发生一些重要变化。（PsycINFO数据库记录
