The Contribution of Morphological and Semantic Relatedness to Repetition Priming at Short and Long Lags: Evidence from Hebrew

TLDR

The study examined how morphological repetition at immediate and delayed lags influences lexical decision in Hebrew across three prime–target relation types. Participants performed lexical decision tasks with prime–target pairs that were either semantically and morphologically related, purely morphologically related, or purely semantically related. Results showed that semantic facilitation was strong at lag 0 but vanished by lag 15, while morphological facilitation persisted at both lags, and combined semantic–morphological pairs behaved like semantic pairs at lag 0 and morphological pairs at lag 15, indicating distinct underlying processes with morphology aiding lexical retrieval.

Abstract

The effect of morphological repetition at lag 0 and at lag 15 on lexical decision was investigated in Hebrew with three types of relation between prime and target. In the semantic-plus-morphological condition (SM), the prime and the target in each pair were two semantically related derivatives of the same root. In the “pure morphological” condition (M), the prime and the target derived from the same root, but their semantic association was very low, or nonexistent. In the semantic priming condition (S), primes and targets were semantically associated but were not morphologically related. The pure semantic relationship produced a significant facilitation at lag 0 that disappeared completely at lag 15. The pure morphological relation produced (smaller but) significant facilitation at lag 0 that was not attenuated at lag 15. When prime and target were semantically as well as morphologically related, the facilitation at lag 0 was similar to semantic priming, whereas at lag 15 it was similar to the pure morphological effect. Significant repetition effects at both lags were also found with non-words that shared the same (nonsensical) root and differed with respect to real derivational affixes. The differential time course for facilitation due to semantic and morphological relatedness suggests distinct underlying processes, although at lag 0 it is possible that semantic relatedness may augment the morphological repetition effect. Morphological repetition probably facilitates the retrieval of lexical information that, under certain circumstances, is necessary for lexical decision.