Since it was introduced in Forster and Davis (1984), masked priming has been widely adopted in the psycholinguistic research on visual word recognition, but there has been little consensus on its actual mechanisms, i.e. how it occurs and how it should be interpreted. This dissertation addresses two different interpretations of masked priming, one based on the Interactive Activation Model (McClelland & Rumelhart, 1981), in which priming is seen as a result of persisting activation from the prime, the other based on the Entry Opening Model (Forster & Davis, 1984), which sees priming as a savings effect. Five experiments are reported testing contrasting hypotheses about the role of prime duration and prime-target asynchrony (SOA) in masked priming using both identity and form priming. Overall, this dissertation lends support to the Entry Opening Model, demonstrating that masked priming is essentially a savings effect, and that as such, it is determined by the SOA, not the prime duration per se.

This thesis describes basic research into visual word recognition and decision making. Determining the best matching lexical representation for a given stimulus involves interactions between representations. The standard task for studying these processes is the lexical decision task (LDT), but there is still debate regarding the factors that affect how individuals make lexical decisions. The nature of lexical interactions and the processes underlying lexical decision-making were addressed here by testing response congruency effects in the masked priming variant of the LDT. The results of seven masked priming experiments showed a robust response congruency effect that depends on the difficulty of the word-nonword discrimination. This finding resolved apparent inconsistencies in previous research. The experiments were simulated using the Bayesian Reader and the Spatial Coding Model (SCM). The probability based Bayesian Reader model failed to accommodate the findings. However, a good fit to the data was provided by a modified version of the SCM in which the assumptions regarding the nature of lexical interactions were changed such that word nodes inhibit only (closely) related competitors. The model also assumes that the difficulty of the word-nonword discrimination affects the degree to which stimulus typicality informs lexical decisions. A critical issue for these experiments involved the definition of orthographic typicality. An algorithm for measuring orthographic typicality and for generating nonwords with a specific level of orthographic typicality (OT3) was developed. An unprimed LDT experiment showed that OT3 affected decision latency even when other standard measures of orthographic typicality were controlled. Two additional masked priming experiments showed that highly typical primes lead to faster word responses and slower nonword responses than less typical primes. Overall, the results of this research enhance our understanding of the processes underlying visual word recognition and lexical decision making, and also have important methodological implications for the field.

This study investigates how Persian compound verbs are processed in the mental lexicon, through which we can infer how they are stored, organized, and accessed. The study focuses on investigating Persian compound verbs in light of psycholinguistic theories on polymorphemic word processing as well as linguistic theories of complex predicates. The psycholinguistic section details three experiments addressing the following three research questions: (1) whether compound verb constituents show significant priming in the masked-priming paradigm; (2) whether priming effects are constrained by semantic transparency; and (3) whether priming effects are due to morphological relatedness. This study revealed several findings: (1) compound verbs in Persian are decomposed into their constituents at early stages of processing, (2) at early stages of processing, decomposition is based on purely orthographic similarity, (3) although both transparent and opaque compound constituents were facilitated while processing, transparency had an impact on processing in the early stages of processing. Finally, the findings seem to support a parallel input effect or competing alternative effect for the verbal constituent of the transparent compound verb, as reflected in the slower facilitation for the verbal constituent compared to the nominal constituent. In theoretical studies on Persian complex predicates, the compound verb formation can be either lexical or syntactic. The overall evidence reflected in the linguistic data for Persian complex predicates presented in this dissertation as well as the results of the experimental studies carried out in this research seem to point towards lexical compounding in Persian compound verb formation. The evidence comes from (1) the nominalization of the compound, i.e. the possibility of using the compound verb as a noun; (2) the atelicity feature, i.e. the possibility of using the compound verb after the progressive expression dar haale ‘in the process of’, which indicates an incomplete action; and (3) the nonreferentiality of the nominal constituent in the compound verb, i.e. the nominal constituent cannot be followed by a pronoun that refers to it. On the other hand, the results of the experimental studies reported in this dissertation seem to support a lexical approach to compound verbs in Persian. The technique used in these experimental studies was masked priming paradigm, which investigates the prelexical and lexical processing. The results reveal constituent priming effects under masked priming technique. This indicates that Persian compound verb constituents are accessed at the prelexical stage of processing. Syntactic calculations are said to be done at later stages of processing. Therefore, the early processing of compound verb constituents leads us to the argument for the lexicality of Persian compound verbs.

The present study sought to investigate the extent to which masked semantic priming is an automatic process and whether its effects vary depending upon the type of stimuli used. Recent studies have shown that there is a differential priming effect for prime-target pairs with different types of semantic relationships. Here, using a semantic categorization task with masked priming, we compared the effects of synonym, antonym,and associatively related non-exemplar prime-target pairs when presented at different stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs). Participants took a prime visibility posttest in conjunction with the categorization task which served as a measure of "partial awareness" of the prime. The results here indicate that differences in perceptual awareness may produce differential semantic priming patterns across the semantic relationships and SOAs considered. Potential mechanisms for this divergence are proposed.

Most bilingual lexical models assume that L1 and L2 either share the same semantic system, or are distinguished at the semantic level but connected through lexical associations. For example, the Revised Hierarchical Model (Kroll & Stewart, 1994) assumes the stronger access from L2 to concepts via the L1 lexical representation at the early stage of L2 acquisition and direct access to concepts after L2 proficiency is achieved. However, the model is not well supported by subsequent empirical evidence, and encounters difficulty in explaining cross-language priming data. The recently developed Sense Model (Finkbeiner, M., Forster, K., Nicol, J., & Nakamura, K., 2004) assumes a direct access from the L2 form to its related meaning and argues for the representational asymmetry in lexical semantics between L1 and L2. This model was designed to account for the translation asymmetry and task effect in the masked priming literature: L2-L1 priming is not observed in lexical decision due to the small proportion of L1 senses activated by the L2 prime; however, the category provides a context which restricts L1 sense activation and thus enhances the effectiveness of the L2 prime in semantic categorization. This dissertation reports the results of several semantic categorization experiments designed to test several assumptions of the Sense Model. Experiments 1-4 investigated whether the Category Restriction Hypothesis assumed by the Sense Model was empirically supported when congruence effects are minimized. The results showed that translation priming could be obtained for exemplars when congruence effects were controlled, but that there were no effects for non-exemplars, as predicted by the Sense Model. Subsequent experiments showed that category size is an important variable, since L2-L1 priming was not obtained with large categories (e.g., living thing), which was taken to indicate that a large category is ineffective as a 'focusing' device to enhance the activation of L2 semantic senses. Finally, it was shown that the priming asymmetry in lexical decision was not due to differential degrees of semantic activation of the prime in L1 and L2.

No description available.

In the masked priming paradigm, responses to a target are faster if the prime and target are identical (repetition priming). Forster (submitted) provides evidence that repetition priming consists of a semantic component, due to the shared meaning of the prime and target, and an orthographic component, due to the shared letters. When an unmasked unrelated word intervenes between the prime and target, repetition priming was reduced, but orthographic priming was unaffected. When this intervener was masked, repetition priming was reduced whereas orthographic priming was eliminated. The unmasked intervener may block a semantic component of priming, and a masked intervener blocks the orthographic component. Experiment 1 replicated Forster’s results and confirmed the results were not due to an SOA confound. Experiment 2 included semantically-related primes in an attempt to examine the intervener’s effect on semantic priming, however, our materials did not yield semantic priming even when no intervener was present.

This study investigates how Persian compound verbs are processed in the mental lexicon, through which we can infer how they are stored, organized, and accessed. The study focuses on investigating Persian compound verbs in light of psycholinguistic theories on polymorphemic word processing as well as linguistic theories of complex predicates. The psycholinguistic section details three experiments addressing the following three research questions: (1) whether compound verb constituents show significant priming in the masked-priming paradigm; (2) whether priming effects are constrained by semantic transparency; and (3) whether priming effects are due to morphological relatedness. This study revealed several findings: (1) compound verbs in Persian are decomposed into their constituents at early stages of processing, (2) at early stages of processing, decomposition is based on purely orthographic similarity, (3) although both transparent and opaque compound constituents were facilitated while processing, transparency had an impact on processing in the early stages of processing. Finally, the findings seem to support a parallel input effect or competing alternative effect for the verbal constituent of the transparent compound verb, as reflected in the slower facilitation for the verbal constituent compared to the nominal constituent. In theoretical studies on Persian complex predicates, the compound verb formation can be either lexical or syntactic. The overall evidence reflected in the linguistic data for Persian complex predicates presented in this dissertation as well as the results of the experimental studies carried out in this research seem to point towards lexical compounding in Persian compound verb formation. The evidence comes from (1) the nominalization of the compound, i.e. the possibility of using the compound verb as a noun; (2) the atelicity feature, i.e. the possibility of using the compound verb after the progressive expression dar haale ‘in the process of’, which indicates an incomplete action; and (3) the nonreferentiality of the nominal constituent in the compound verb, i.e. the nominal constituent cannot be followed by a pronoun that refers to it. On the other hand, the results of the experimental studies reported in this dissertation seem to support a lexical approach to compound verbs in Persian. The technique used in these experimental studies was masked priming paradigm, which investigates the prelexical and lexical processing. The results reveal constituent priming effects under masked priming technique. This indicates that Persian compound verb constituents are accessed at the prelexical stage of processing. Syntactic calculations are said to be done at later stages of processing. Therefore, the early processing of compound verb constituents leads us to the argument for the lexicality of Persian compound verbs.

In the masked priming paradigm, responses to a target are faster if the prime and target are identical (repetition priming). Forster (submitted) provides evidence that repetition priming consists of a semantic component, due to the shared meaning of the prime and target, and an orthographic component, due to the shared letters. When an unmasked unrelated word intervenes between the prime and target, repetition priming was reduced, but orthographic priming was unaffected. When this intervener was masked, repetition priming was reduced whereas orthographic priming was eliminated. The unmasked intervener may block a semantic component of priming, and a masked intervener blocks the orthographic component. Experiment 1 replicated Forster’s results and confirmed the results were not due to an SOA confound. Experiment 2 included semantically-related primes in an attempt to examine the intervener’s effect on semantic priming, however, our materials did not yield semantic priming even when no intervener was present.

This study investigates how Persian compound verbs are processed in the mental lexicon, through which we can infer how they are stored, organized, and accessed. The study focuses on investigating Persian compound verbs in light of psycholinguistic theories on polymorphemic word processing as well as linguistic theories of complex predicates. The psycholinguistic section details three experiments addressing the following three research questions: (1) whether compound verb constituents show significant priming in the masked-priming paradigm; (2) whether priming effects are constrained by semantic transparency; and (3) whether priming effects are due to morphological relatedness. This study revealed several findings: (1) compound verbs in Persian are decomposed into their constituents at early stages of processing, (2) at early stages of processing, decomposition is based on purely orthographic similarity, (3) although both transparent and opaque compound constituents were facilitated while processing, transparency had an impact on processing in the early stages of processing. Finally, the findings seem to support a parallel input effect or competing alternative effect for the verbal constituent of the transparent compound verb, as reflected in the slower facilitation for the verbal constituent compared to the nominal constituent. In theoretical studies on Persian complex predicates, the compound verb formation can be either lexical or syntactic. The overall evidence reflected in the linguistic data for Persian complex predicates presented in this dissertation as well as the results of the experimental studies carried out in this research seem to point towards lexical compounding in Persian compound verb formation. The evidence comes from (1) the nominalization of the compound, i.e. the possibility of using the compound verb as a noun; (2) the atelicity feature, i.e. the possibility of using the compound verb after the progressive expression dar haale ‘in the process of’, which indicates an incomplete action; and (3) the nonreferentiality of the nominal constituent in the compound verb, i.e. the nominal constituent cannot be followed by a pronoun that refers to it. On the other hand, the results of the experimental studies reported in this dissertation seem to support a lexical approach to compound verbs in Persian. The technique used in these experimental studies was masked priming paradigm, which investigates the prelexical and lexical processing. The results reveal constituent priming effects under masked priming technique. This indicates that Persian compound verb constituents are accessed at the prelexical stage of processing. Syntactic calculations are said to be done at later stages of processing. Therefore, the early processing of compound verb constituents leads us to the argument for the lexicality of Persian compound verbs.