Morphological decomposition and the reverse base frequency effect

被引:292
作者
Taft, M [1 ]
机构
[1] Univ New S Wales, Sch Psychol, Sydney, NSW 2052, Australia
来源
QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY SECTION A-HUMAN EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY | 2004年 / 57卷 / 04期
基金
澳大利亚研究理事会;
关键词
D O I
10.1080/02724980343000477
中图分类号
B84 [心理学];
学科分类号
04 ; 0402 ;
摘要
If recognition of a polymorphemic word always takes place via its decomposition into stem and affix, then the higher the frequency of its stem (i.e., base frequency) the easier the lexical decision response should be when frequency of the word itself (i.e., surface frequency) is controlled. Past experiments have demonstrated such a base frequency effect, but not under all circumstances. Thus, a dual pathway notion has become dominant as an account of morphological processing whereby both decomposition and whole-word access is possible. Two experiments are reported here that demonstrate how an obligatory decomposition account can handle the absence of base frequency effects. In particular, it is shown that the later stage of recombining the stem and affix is harder for high base frequency words than for lower base frequency words when matched on surface frequency, and that this can counterbalance the advantage of easier access to the higher frequency stem. When the combination stage is crucial for discriminating the word items from the nonword items, a reverse base frequency effect emerges, revealing the disadvantage at this stage for high base frequency words. Such an effect is hard for the dual-pathway account to explain, but follows naturally from the idea of obligatory decomposition.
引用
收藏
页码:745 / 765
页数:21
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