Morphological priming: The role of prime duration, semantic transparency, and affix position

Patterns of facilitation in three lexical decision studies reveal several p roperties of morphologically complex wards that influence processing. In on e study, effects of morphological (VOWED-VOW) similarity are contrasted wit h effects of either semantic (PLEDGE-VOW) or orthographic (VOWEL-VOW) simil arity at two prime durations to show the distinctiveness of morphological p rocessing. In a second study, we compare morphologically complex forms that are semantically transparent (CASUALLY-CASUALNESS) with opaque forms (CASU ALTY-CASUALNESS) and show that opaque relatives are more similar to VOWEL-V OW type pairs than to transparent relatives. In the third study, we examine facilitation for complex targets (CALCULATION) preceded by prefixed (MISCA LCULATE) and suffixed (CALCULATOR) relatives and show that the position of the base morpheme influences processing under cross-modal but not under pur ely visual presentation conditions. Taken collectively, under comparable pr esentation conditions, semantic transparency but not base morpheme position constrains morphological processing. (C) 1999 Academic Press.