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Participants judged whether a letter-string created a word when a single letter was added to the end indicated by a hyphen. Unique final fragments were easier to reconstruct when corresponding to the body of a word, having no onset (e.g. laugh from –augh) than when the second consonant of a two-letter onset was also included (e.g. blind from –lind). Conversely, unique initial fragments were easier to reconstruct when including the first consonant of a two-letter coda (e.g. drink from drin–) than when corresponding to an “antibody”, having no coda (e.g. claim from clai–). Such results cannot be explained by any account of orthographic processing based purely on the identity and position of the component letters while ignoring their function as an onset, coda, or vowel. Instead, the results are compatible with a model such as the proposed Subsyllabic Processing (SSP) account where subsyllabic structures are hierarchically represented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study investigates how morphological information is processed and represented in the bilingual lexicon. We employed a masked cross-language morphological priming paradigm to examine morphological decomposition and semantic transparency in bilingual lexical processing. A robust and reliable morphological priming effect was observed for both transparent compounds and opaque compounds, though there was a strong trend for more facilitation in the former than the latter. To account for these results, we propose a lemma-based bilingual model specifying the activation/competition between lemmas during cross-language activation at the morphological level. Our novel findings advance the understanding of interplay between morphology and bilingualism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Word order, case markers, and semantics are combined to decode a sentence structure. • Semantic-driven parsing in unmarked non-canonical sentences activates Broca's area. • Different types of syntactic parsing recruit a common neural substrate. For sentence comprehension, information carried by semantic relations between constituents must be combined with other information to decode the constituent structure of a sentence, due to atypical and noisy situations of language use. Neural correlates of decoding sentence structure by semantic information have remained largely unexplored. In this functional MRI study, we examine the neural basis of semantic-driven syntactic parsing during sentence reading and compare it with that of other types of syntactic parsing driven by word order and case marking. Chinese transitive sentences of various structures were investigated, differing in word order, case making, and agent-patient semantic relations (i.e., same vs. different in animacy). For the non-canonical unmarked sentences without usable case marking, a semantic-driven effect triggered by agent-patient ambiguity was found in the left inferior frontal gyrus opercularis (IFGoper) and left inferior parietal lobule, with the activity not being modulated by naturalness factors of the sentences. The comparison between each type of non-canonical sentences with canonical sentences revealed that the non-canonicity effect engaged the left posterior frontal and temporal regions, in line with previous studies. No extra neural activity was found responsive to case marking within the non-canonical sentences. A word order effect across all types of sentences was also found in the left IFGoper, suggesting a common neural substrate between different types of parsing. The semantic-driven effect was also observed for the non-canonical marked sentences but not for the canonical sentences, suggesting that semantic information is used in decoding sentence structure in addition to case marking. The current findings illustrate the neural correlates of syntactic parsing with semantics, and provide neural evidence of how semantics facilitates syntax together with other information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examined the sensitivity of Chinese-English bilinguals to derivational word structure in English. In the first experiment, English monolinguals showed masked priming effects for prime-target pairs related both transparently (e.g., hunter- HUNT) and opaquely (e.g., corner- CORN) but not for those related purely in terms of form (e.g., freeze-FREE), whereas bilinguals showed priming in all three conditions. Furthermore, stronger form priming was found for bilinguals who were less experienced in English. A second experiment showed that bilingual participants found it harder to identify items as nonwords when the words possessed a suffix (e.g., animalful) than when they did not (e.g., animalfil), and this was true in terms of accuracy even for bilinguals with less exposure to English. Overall, these findings suggest that Chinese-English bilinguals, regardless of proficiency, have some sensitivity to morphological structure and that greater proficiency leads to priming effects that tend to pattern more like those of monolinguals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The effects of exposure to non-English heritage languages versus exposure to foreign-accented English during early childhood on language performances later in life were investigated. Three groups of young adult participants who differed in their early home language environment were examined on a series of linguistic tasks. Results showed that people who were mostly exposed to accented English in the early home environment are more native-like in various aspects of English language performance than those who were mostly exposed to their non-English heritage language, including vocabulary, pronunciation, and processing of certain types of speech stimuli. Early and extended exposure to accented speech, however, does not appear to enhance the ability to perceive foreign accents in general, and may in fact produce a disadvantage when listening to unfamiliar accents. These findings provide some initial insight into the consequences of migrant parents choosing to speak one language over the other with their children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A word-spotting task is used in Spanish to test the way in which polysyllabic letter-strings are parsed in this language. Monosyllabic words (e.g.,bar) embedded at the beginning of a pseudoword were immediately followed by either a coda-forming consonant (e.g.,barto) or a vowel (e.g.,baros). In the former case, the embedded word corresponds to the first spoken syllable, whereas it cuts across the syllable boundary in the latter case. Unlike a previous study in English using the same methodology (Taft & Álvarez, 2014), the embedded word was found to be easier to detect when followed by a consonant than a vowel, at least for low-frequency words. It was concluded that phonological recoding is more important in the parsing of Spanish words than English words, where maximization of the coda dominates instead. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nonword classification responses are examined in this study to establish the amount of interference arising from the presence of an embedded word. In Experiment 1, greater interference is found from an initial embedding (e.g., furb vs lurb, cf. fur) than a final embedding (e.g., clid vs clig, cf. lid). In addition, an ''outer" embedding (e.g., jomb vs vomb, cf. job) generates interference that is no greater than for an initial embedding. These results are inconsistent with the idea of left-to-right parsing, while accounts of word recognition that center on open bigrams or the spatial coding of letters require additional processes. Instead, the results are interpreted within a model of word parsing and lexical access that incorporates subsyllabic structures; an account that is supported in Experiments 2 and 3 by the critical finding that an initially embedded word interferes more when it ends in a consonant (e.g., the fur of furb, the shadow of shadowl) than with a vowel (e.g., the tea of teaf, the coffee of coffeep). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study examined within – and cross-language priming patterns among German-English-French trilinguals in order to explore the lexico-semantic representation of L3 in relation to L1 and L2. The trilinguals participated in three lexical decision tasks within the masked translation priming paradigm. The results showed significant within-language repetition priming effects in all three languages, significant translation priming effects for L2-L1, L1-L3, and L2-L3, but no significant priming for L1-L2, L3-L1 or L3-L2. Our findings demonstrate that translation priming asymmetry persists in trilinguals and that the weakest L3 is integrated into both L1 and L2 conceptually (i.e. three languages have a commonly shared conceptual representation). In addition, our results showed a language dominance shift over lexical development between L1 and L2. We argue for a modified Sense Model as the best fit to explain the cognitive architecture of the trilingual lexicon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigated the relationship between bilingualism and task switching ability using a standardized measure of switching and an objective measure of bilingual language proficiency. Heritage Language (HL) speaking Spanish-English and Mandarin-English bilinguals and English speaking monolinguals completed all four subtests of the Color-Word Interference Test (CWIT), an English verbal fluency task, and a picture naming test (the Multilingual Naming Test) in English. Bilinguals also named pictures in their HL to assess HL proficiency. Spanish-English bilinguals were advantaged in task switching, exhibiting significantly smaller switching cost than monolinguals, but were disadvantaged in verbal fluency and picture naming. Additionally, performance on these cognitive and linguistic tasks was related to degree of HL proficiency, so that increased ability to name pictures in Spanish was associated with greater switching advantage, and greater disadvantage in both verbal fluency and picture naming. Mandarin-English bilinguals, who differed from the Spanish-English bilinguals on several demographic and language-use characteristics, exhibited a smaller but statistically significant switching advantage, but no linguistic disadvantage, and no clear relationship between HL proficiency and the switching advantage. Together these findings demonstrate an explicit link between objectively measured bilingual language proficiency and both bilingual advantages and disadvantages, while also showing that consequences of bilingualism for cognitive and linguistic task performance can vary across different language combinations. (JINS, 2015, 21, 531–544) [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A visual lexical decision task was used to examine the interaction between base frequency (i.e., the cumulative frequencies of morphologically related forms) and semantic transparency for a list of derived words. Linear mixed effects models revealed that high base frequency facilitates the recognition of the complex word (i.e., a base frequency effect), but the magnitude of this declines with semantic transparency. These results suggest that the extent to which the constituents of a complex word contribute to its recognition is dictated by semantic transparency. The implications of these findings are discussed in the context of localist-connectionist models of morphological processing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It was found that the unmasked presentation of a complex form that corresponded to only one definition of a homograph (e.g., solely , which is related to the ‘alone’ meaning of soles ) did not inhibit the subsequent recognition of a complex form that was related to the competing meaning (e.g., SOLES , which is related to the ‘shoe’ meaning). Further studies found that inhibitory priming only emerged when the unmasked prime was related to the subordinate meaning of the homograph (e.g., fined ) and the target to the dominant meaning (e.g., FINEST ), but not when the prime was dominant (e.g., longer ) and the target subordinate (e.g., LONGING ). These findings suggest that the relative dominance of the prime-target pair dictates whether inhibitory priming occurs. Implications for frameworks of morphological processing are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When a nonword is created from a real word by transposing two medial letters (e.g.,oebyfromobey), the former is confused with the latter more than when the transposition involves the initial letter (e.g.,boey). This is called the “transposed-letter (TL) Position” effect. It is shown here that the addition of a prefix eliminates the TL Position effect (i.e.,disboeyshows as much interference asdisoebyrelative to a nontransposed control). The TL Position effect also disappears if the prefix creates a nonword when added to the stem (e.g.,reboeyshows as much interference asreoeby), but there is no interference at all when a nonprefix is added to the stem instead (e.g.,raboeyorraoeby). The fact that there is strong TL interference for prefixed nonwords (e.g.,reboeyandreoeby) strongly points to unavoidable morphological decomposition. The disappearance of the TL Position effect when a prefix is added to the stem is ascribed to the reduction in perceptual salience for the initial letter, and this is confirmed when the TL Position was also shown to disappear when the prefix was replaced by digits. The results of the five experiments lead to a consideration of the way in which models of orthographic processing might handle both TL interference and morphological decomposition. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Abstract: The way in which letters are assigned their position when recognizing a visually presented word was examined in three experiments using nonwords created by transposing the two medial consonants of a bisyllabic baseword (e.g., nakpin, semron). The difficulty in responding to such “TL” nonwords in a lexical decision task was shown to be lower when the medial consonants of the baseword formed a complex coda (e.g., the rm of sermon) than when they comprised a separate coda and onset (e.g., the p and k of napkin). The same result was shown in false positive responses to nonwords when their visibility was degraded through masking. In addition, these TL effects were just as strong for nonwords like nakpin as they were for nonwords whose medial consonants formed a complex coda like warlus, but whose baseword was syllabified between those consonants (e.g., the l and r of walrus). Such findings are a challenge for most current models of letter position assignment. Instead, they can be explained by an account where bisyllabic words are stored in lexical memory with a structure that maximizes the coda of the first syllable and where medial consonants are tried out in all viable subsyllabic slots. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Korean subsyllabic structure was investigated by observing the pattern of responses arising from letter transpositions within a syllable in the Hangul script. Experiment 1 revealed no confusions when the onset and coda of one syllable of a disyllabic word were transposed. This was also the case in Experiment 2, where the transposition took place within a syllable having a coda composed of two consonants. However, confusion with the baseword was observed when the two consonants within the complex coda were themselves transposed. These results are taken to support the view that Hangul (and possibly all concatenating orthographic scripts) is processed based on its onset, vowel, and coda structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For bilinguals born in an English-speaking country or who arrive at a young age, English (L2) often becomes their dominant language by adulthood. This study examines whether such adult bilinguals show equivalent performance to monolingual English native speakers on three English auditory processing tasks: phonemic awareness, spelling-to-dictation and auditory comprehension. The study contrasts three bilingual language groups differing in their L1: morphosyllabic/logographic L1 (Cantonese), morphosyllabic/alphabetic (Vietnamese) L1 and non-morphosyllabic/alphabetic L1 (Other). Particularly on the tasks that involved nonwords, the morphosyllabic bilingual groups performed most poorly, suggesting an effect of L1 phonological structure on English processing despite L1 having become subordinate to L2. The results indicate that even when a bilingual is born, raised and educated in their L2 environment, native equivalence in L2 is not assured. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is demonstrated that the meaning given to an ambiguous word (e.g., stick) can be biased by the masked presentation of a polymorphemic word derived from that meaning (e.g., sticky). No bias in interpretation is observed when the masked prime is a word that is semantically related to the target with no morphological relationship (e.g., glue), though such a semantically based bias is revealed when the prime is unmasked. Because the masked priming results cannot be explained in terms of facilitation of processing at either the form level or the semantic level, it is concluded that an intermediate level provides the locus of the effect, referred to here as the 'lemma' level. Thus, any model of lexical processing needs to incorporate such an intermediate level to capture the relationship between stem morphemes and their derived forms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: When two consonants within an English word were transposed to create a nonword, difficulty in lexical decision responses to that nonword was revealed, most strongly when the coda of the first syllable was exchanged with the onset of the second (e.g., nakpin derived from napkin), but also when onsets were exchanged between syllables (e.g., kapnin) as well as codas (e.g., nankip). The latter findings are incompatible with current models of letter processing. Moreover, such transposed letter (TL) effects were shown to be considerably reduced in Hangul, the alphabetic script used in Korean. Because Hangul physically demarcates the onset and coda positions for every consonant, it is argued that it is ambiguity in assignment of a consonant to an onset or coda slot that leads to the TL effect in a linear script such as English. Such a conclusion implies that models of letter processing should incorporate the involvement of subsyllabic structure, something that is currently lacking. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: There is increasing evidence that orthographic information has an impact on spoken word processing. However, much of this evidence comes from tasks that are subject to strategic effects. In the three experiments reported here, we examined activation of orthographic information during spoken word processing within a paradigm that is unlikely to involve strategic factors, namely auditory priming where the relationship between prime and target was masked from awareness. Specifically, we examined whether auditory primes that were homographic with their spoken targets (e.g., the pseudohomograph /dri:d/, which can be spelled the same as the target word “dread”) produced greater facilitation than primes that were equally phonologically related to their targets but could not be spelled the same as them (e.g., /šri:d/ followed by the spoken word “shred”). Two auditory lexical decision experiments produced clear pseudohomograph priming even though the participants were unaware of the orthographic relationship between the primes and targets. A task that required participants to merely repeat the spoken target revealed an effect of orthography on error rates, but not on latencies. It was concluded that, in literate adults, orthography is important in speech recognition just as phonology is important in reading. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The word virus is not normally considered polymorphemic, yet it is clearly both semantically and orthographically related to the word viral. Thus, the subunit vir takes on the role of a bound morpheme. In contrast, the words future and futile also share a subunit (fut), but are semantically unrelated. The reported experiment demonstrates facilitation in a masked priming experiment for the semantically related pairs that share an initial orthographic subunit (e.g., virus-viral), but not for the semantically unrelated pairs (e.g., future-futile). Whether the subunit was pronounced the same way in the prime and target was shown to be irrelevant. Furthermore, semantic relatedness was insufficient to produce priming when orthography was not shared. It was concluded that, while the units of processing within the orthographic system may be the same for the two types of item, their representation at a higher level may depend on the correlation between form with meaning. For example, virus and viral might share a higher level representation and thus facilitate each other, whereas future and futile might be represented separately at that higher level and even compete with each other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How polysyllabic English words are analyzed in silent reading was examined in three experiments by comparing lexical decision responses to words physically split on the screen. The gap was compatible either with the Maximal Onset Principle or the Maximal Coda Principle. The former corresponds to the spoken syllable (e.g., ca det), except when the word has a stressed short first vowel (e.g., ra dish), while the reverse is true for the latter (giving cad et and rad ish). Native English speakers demonstrated a general preference for the Max Coda analysis and a correlation with reading ability when such an analysis did not correspond with the spoken syllable. Native Japanese speakers, on the other hand, showed a Max Onset preference regardless of the type of word, while native Mandarin Chinese speakers showed no preference at all. It is concluded that a maximization of the coda is the optimal representation of polysyllabic words in English and that poorer native readers are more influenced by phonology than are better readers. The way that nonnative readers mentally represent polysyllabic English words is affected by the way such words are structured in their native language, which may not lead to optimal English processing. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Research in English suggests that syllables can be analyzed in terms of two subunits—the onset (defined as the initial consonant or consonant cluster) and the rime (the unit formed by the vowel and following consonant/s). This study investigated whether nonnative readers of English, which in the case of the present study were native Filipino speakers, also make use of onset–rime units, particularly when some features of their native language (namely infixation and reduplication) appear to foster no awareness of such units. In two lexical decision experiments, monosyllabic English words were presented, divided in between their first and second consonants (e.g., B LIND), at their onset–rime boundary (e.g., BL IND), or at their antibody boundary (e.g., BLI ND). Results indicated that the processes of infixation and reduplication did not affect the English word processing of native Filipino speakers. Rather, results for both native Filipino and native English speakers suggest that onsets composed of an “s + consonant” sequence (e.g., STAMP) are less cohesive than onsets comprised of a stop–liquid sequence (e.g., BLIND). It was concluded that not only may sonority constraints underlie onset cohesiveness, but that such phonetic properties may also be involved in visual word recognition. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The research presented here examines the proposal that orthographic processing in reading polysyllabic words takes place via an analysis of the word into an orthographic/morphological structure called the Basic Orthographic Syllabic Structure or BOSS. This structure includes the largest possible coda in the first component (e.g., the THUND of THUNDER) and, as such, it cuts across the phonological syllable boundary (e.g., THUN + DER). The existence of the BOSS has been previously supported by showing that words physically divided at their BOSS (e.g., THUNDER) are faster to recognize than those divided at their syllable (e.g., THUNDER). However, there has been little, if any, report of confirmatory evidence for this conclusion. Three experiments are reported here demonstrating that whether the BOSS division is faster than the syllable division depends crucially on the reading ability of the participants. Better adult reading, independently measured in terms of comprehension, is associated with a preference for the BOSS division while poorer adult reading is more associated with a syllable preference. Such a result potentially explains the conflicting findings that have been previously reported. A number of different explanations are offered for the pattern of results, with the suggestion that poorer adult reading is more oriented toward the pronunciation of the word than is better reading. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines the processing units involved in the reading of French polysyllabic words. Comparison between units following maximal onset and coda principles; Irrelevance of the syllabic structure to visual word recognition; Correlation between stored lexical and incoming sensory representations.

Presents a study on the positional specificity of radicals in Chinese character recognition. Nature of the radical-level representations in the orthographic level; Insignificance of positional information in character-level representations; Character, naming and lexical decision responses to transposable and multiradical transposable characters and non-characters, words and nonwords.

Examines the involvement of submorphemic information in the recognition of Chinese characters. Use of a character decision task; Effect of the frequency of the right hand radical on the responses to two-radical characters; Sensitivity of the radical frequency to the radical position; Independent activation of simple radicals in character recognition.

Discusses experiments which examine form-priming effects in neighborhoods in which density has been manipulated either in terms of letter units or in terms of subsyllabic units. Concept of orthographic neighborhood; Use of monosyllabic nonwords as primes; Occurrence of priming for targets with low-frequency bodies; Definition of neighborhood density in terms of individual letter and subsyllabic units.

Addresses the question of where it is possible to read a word for meaning without phonological mediation. Role of phonology in reading; What is phonology; Indepth look at phonological recording; Reference made to the conceptualization of the lexical processing system; Details on the alternative method used for homophony manipulation; Conclusions reached.

Studies the influence of the phonological characteristics of the French language on the functional units of reading. Difficulty in positioning of the syllable boundary; Background on the concept of the Basic Orthographic Syllabic Structure (BOSS); Recognition of polymorphemic words through sublexical units; Biasing of nonword pronunciations.

Recent evidence points to the important role of embedded word activations in visual word recognition. The present study asked how the reading system prioritises word identification when not just one, but two different words are embedded within the same position. This question was addressed by using a masked primed lexical decision task (Experiment 1) with target words embedded in nonword primes (tea or team in teamaction). Results revealed priming independently of the length, position, or morphological status of the embedded word. However, when primes were used as targets within a word naming task (Experiment 2), participants were more likely to name the longer than the shorter embedded word, independent of morphological status. Our results suggest that the reading system gives priority to longer embedded words, which we discuss in the context of recent theories of visual word recognition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• The whole-word lemma for Chinese compounds is activated via the morpheme lemmas. • The lemma for monomorphemic words is accessed directly from the form level. • Semantic transparency has little effect on whole-word access for Chinese compounds. The present study examined the effect of both morphological complexity and semantic transparency in Chinese compound word recognition. Using a visual lexical decision task, our electrophysiological results showed that transparent and opaque compounds induced stronger Left Anterior Negativity (LAN) than monomorphemic words. This result suggests that Chinese compounds might be decomposed into their constituent morphemes at the lemma level, whereas monomorphemic words are accessed as a whole-word lemma directly from the form level. In addition, transparent and opaque compounds produced a similar N400 as each other, suggesting that transparency did not show an effect on the involvement of constituent morphemes during access to the whole-word lemma. Two behavioral experiments additionally showed similar patterns to the EEG results. These findings support morphological decomposition for compounds at the lemma level as proposed by the full-parsing model, and no evidence is found to support the role of transparency during Chinese compound word recognition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Korean has visually salient syllable units that are often mapped onto either prefixes or suffixes in derived words. In addition, prefixed and suffixed words may be processed differently given a left-to-right parsing procedure and the need to resolve morphemic ambiguity in prefixes in Korean. To test this hypothesis, four experiments using the masked priming lexical decision paradigm were conducted. Results showed that suffixed primes facilitated responses to their stem targets regardless of the lexicality or interpretability of the primes. In contrast, prefixed primes had a significant effect only when they were real words, and not when they were either interpretable or noninterpretable prefixed pseudowords. These results suggest that there may be two different processing mechanisms for derived words in Korean. One is prelexical morphological decomposition for suffixed words, and the other is the supralexical analysis for prefixed words where decomposition occurs only after the whole word has been accessed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using a priming procedure, 4 experiments were carried out to investigate the effects of a short preexposure of a prime that was a radical or contained radicals identical to the target. Significant facilitation was found when the target contained the prime as a radical, although only for low-frequency targets which did not arise merely as a result of graphical similarity. Facilitation also occurred when the prime and target shared a radical in the same position but not when in different positions. When the prime and target had exactly the same radicals but in different positions, however, the priming effect was inhibitory. This set of results suggests that simple characters (radicals) and complex characters are represented at a different level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines three types of sublexical units in Spanish visual word recognition. Lexical-decision tasks; First-syllable frequency effect; Word-frequency effect; Basic orthographic syllabic structure frequency; Models based on obligatory morphological mediation and independent or postlexical morphological representation; Dual-route model of lexical access.

The interaction between morphological, orthographic, and phonological information in reading Chinese compound words was investigated in five sets of experiments, using both masked priming and visual-visual priming lexical decision tasks. Words sharing common morphemes were consistently found to facilitate each other, although the priming effects were modulated by spatial overlap of orthographic forms in masked priming. Priming effects were also found for words having homographic-homophonic characters, but the effect tended to be inhibitory when the SOA between primes and targets was long and when the competing morphemes corresponding to the characters were at the initial constituent position of primes and targets. Priming effects between words having homographic but non-homophonic characters were more inhibitory, compared with effects between words having homographic-homophonic characters. Words having orthographically different homophonic morphemes did not prime each other throughout the experiments. The results were discussed in terms of how lexical representations incorporate morphological structure and how morphological, orthographic, and phonological information interacts in constraining semantic activation of constituent morphemes and compound words. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]