Elisabeth Beyersmann

Macquarie University · Department of Psychology

Masked priming studies have repeatedly provided evidence for a form-based morpho-orthographic segmentation mechanism that blindly decomposes any word with the mere appearance of morphological complexity (e.g., corn + er). This account has been called into question by Baayen et al. Psychological Review, 118, 438-482 (2011), who pointed out that the...

One key finding in support of the hypothesis that written words are automatically parsed into component morphemes independently of the true morphological structure of the stimuli, so-called morpho-orthographic segmentation, is that suffixed nonword primes facilitate the visual recognition of a stem target (rapidifier-RAPIDE) whereas non-suffixed pr...

Models of morphological processing make different predictions about whether morphologically complex written words are initially decomposed and recognized on the basis of their morphemic subunits or whether they can directly be accessed as whole words and at what point semantics begin to influence morphological processing. In this study, we used unp...

In this pre-registered meta-analysis, we investigated the effectiveness of morphology instruction on literacy outcomes for primary school children in English-speaking countries. We were interested in overall reading and spelling outcomes, but we also looked separately at results for trained and untrained words in order to determine whether there wa...

This study follows the footsteps of Jonathan Grainger and colleagues by investigating compound processing in English monolinguals and Chinese-English bilinguals using the masked primed lexical decision paradigm. First language (L1) and second language (L2) speakers responded to a semantically transparent compound (e.g., snowball-SNOW), a semantical...

We examined the reliance on phonological decoding and morpho-orthographic decomposition strategies in developing and skilled readers of French. A lexical decision experiment was conducted where the critical stimuli were four types of nonwords, all derived from the same base word, such as the French word visage (face) in the following examples: (a)...

We examined the reliance on phonological decoding and morpho-orthographic decomposition strategies in developing and skilled readers of French. A lexical decision experiment was conducted where the critical stimuli were four types of nonword all derived from the same base-word, such as the French word visage (face) in the following examples: 1) pse...

Reading morphologically complex words requires analysis of their morphemic subunits (e.g., play + er); however, the positional constraints of morphemic processing are still little understood. The current study involved three unprimed lexical decision experiments to directly compare the positional encoding of stems and affixes during reading and to...

This study used a novel word learning paradigm to investigate the role of morphology in the acquisition of complex words, when participants have no prior lexical knowledge of the embedded morphemic constituents. The influence of morphological family size on novel word learning was examined by comparing novel stems (torb) combined with large morphol...

The current study explored cross-language morphological transfer mechanisms using a similar-script morphological translation priming paradigm in highly proficient unbalanced Turkish (first language; L1)-English (second language; L2) bilinguals. Using noncognate English and Turkish stimuli that shared a similar meaning with no form overlap (e.g., ic...

The present study asked whether oral vocabulary training can facilitate reading in a second language (L2). Fifty L2 speakers of English received oral training over three days on complex novel words, with predictable and unpredictable spellings, composed of novel stems and existing suffixes (i.e., vishing, vishes, vished). After training, participan...

In this study, we examined the effect of previewing unfamiliar vocabulary on the real-time reading behavior of first language (L1) and second language (L2) readers. University students with English as their L1 or L2 read passages with embedded pseudowords. In a within-participant manipulation, definitions of the pseudowords were either previewed be...

A great majority of people around the world know more than one language. So, how does knowing one language affect the learning and use of additional languages? The question of cross-language influences is the focus of this book. Do bilinguals hear, understand, and produce language and meaning differently because of the languages they speak? How wel...

This work explored the development of effects of morphological target-flanker relatedness in two groups of primary school children and in a group of adult participants. We examined effects of transparent morphological relatedness in two conditions. One where the target was the stem and flankers were derivations (e.g., farmer farm farmer), and the o...

German skilled readers have been found to engage in morphological and syllable-based processing in visual word recognition. However, the relative reliance on syllables and morphemes in reading multi-syllabic complex words is still unresolved. The present study aimed to unveil which of these sub-lexical units are the preferred units of reading by em...

Written words are everywhere. Learning to read is one of the main tasks of our early school years, and the ability to read opens up a world of possibilities—we can absorb ourselves in stories, remind ourselves of important information, and learn new things. But few of us think about what we are actually doing as we read. Moving the eyes is essentia...

Distributing study opportunities over time typically improves the retention of verbal material compared to consecutive study trials, yet little is known about the influence of temporal spacing on orthographic form learning specifically. This experiment sought to obtain and compare estimates of the magnitude of the spacing effect on written word for...

This study used a novel word-training paradigm to examine the integration of spoken word knowledge when learning to read morphologically complex novel words. Australian primary school children including Grades 3-5 were taught the oral form of a set of novel morphologically complex words (e.g., (/vɪbɪŋ/, /vɪbd/, /vɪbz/), with a second set serving as...

Purpose Readers can draw on their knowledge of sound-to-letter mappings to form expectations about the spellings of known spoken words prior to seeing them in written sentences. The current study asked whether such orthographic expectancies are observed in the absence of contextual support at the point of reading. Method Seventy-eight adults recei...

The present study combined magnetoencephalography (MEG) recordings with fast periodic visual stimulation (FPVS) to investigate automatic neural responses to morphemes in developing and skilled readers. Native English-speaking children (N = 17, grade 5–6) and adults (N = 28) were presented with rapid streams of base stimuli (6 Hz) interleaved period...

Recent research with adult participants using the flankers task has shown that the recognition of central target words is facilitated by the presence of morphologically related flanker words. Here we explored the development of such morphological flanker effects in two groups of primary school children (average ages = 8 years 6 months and 10 years...

The current study investigated the influence of morphological structure in nonword reading in a case series of individuals with acquired dyslexia following brain damage. The aim of the study was to test the separate influence of embedded stems and suffixes on reading skills by comparing four different types of complex nonwords: stem + suffix (e.g.,...

In this theoretical review, evidence for the link between spoken and written word knowledge is summarised, highlighting the specific hypotheses posed in this field and the extent to which they are informative regarding causation. A brief overview of major theories of orthographic learning draws attention to how each characterises the role of oral v...

Do readers benefit from their knowledge of the phonological form and meaning of stems when seeing them embedded in morphologically complex words for the first time in print? This question was addressed using a word learning paradigm. Participants were trained on novel spoken word stems and their meanings (“tump”). Following training, participants t...

Purpose Children learning to read in English must learn to read words with varying degrees of grapheme-phoneme correspondence regularity, but there is very little research comparing methods of instruction for words with less predictable or irregular spellings. Therefore, we compared three methods of instruction for beginning readers. Method Eighty...

Distributing study opportunities over time typically improves the retention of verbal material compared to consecutive study trials, yet little is known about the influence of temporal spacing on the learning of orthographic form specifically. This experiment sought to obtain and compare estimates of the magnitude of the spacing effect on written w...

The use of emojis in digital communication has become increasingly popular, but how emojis are processed and integrated in reading processes remains underexplored. This study used eye-tracking to monitor university students’ ( n = 47) eye movements while reading single-line text messages with a face emoji embedded medially. Messages contained a sem...

Despite substantial evidence that spacing study opportunities over time improves the retention of learned verbal material compared with study trials that occur consecutively, the influence of temporal spacing on children’s learning of written words has not been investigated. This experiment examined whether temporal spacing influenced Grade 3 and 4...

Text messages are characterised by a casual language style, ‘textese’ (e.g., c u on thurs). This study investigated adolescents’ perceptions of the use of different levels of textese in digital messages which varied in their intended recipient (friend, teacher). Grade 8 students in Australia (N = 90, aged 13-14 years) each read six text messages pu...

The present study used steady-state visual evoked potentials (SSVEPs) to examine the spatio-temporal dynamics of reading morphologically complex words and test the neurophysiological activation pattern elicited by stems and suffixes. Three different types of target words were presented to proficient readers in a delayed naming task: truly suffixed...

Empirical evidence from masked priming research shows that skilled readers can rapidly identify morphological structure in written language. However, comparatively little is known about how and when this skill is acquired in children. The current work investigated the developmental trajectory of morphological processing in a 2-year longitudinal stu...

Morpheme-based training programs to improve literacy skills are widely used with older children in the morphologically complex German language. This study investigated whether (1) morphological training is effective early in development (Grade 2) and (2) effects can be attributed to advanced morphological processing. Fifty-two German-speaking secon...

Despite substantial evidence that distributing study opportunities over time improves the retention of learned verbal material compared to study trials that occur consecutively, the influence of temporal spacing on children’s learning of written words has not been investigated. This experiment examined whether temporal spacing influenced Grade 3 an...

In this work we propose the use of Entropy to measure variability in pronunciations in pseudowords reading aloud: pseudowords where participants give many different pronunciations receive higher Entropy values. Monolingual adults, monolingual children, and bilingual children proficient in different European languages varying in orthographic depth w...

Two masked priming experiments investigated the impact of prime lexicality (word vs. nonword) and the pseudo-morphological structure of prime stimuli (pseudosuffixed vs. nonsuffixed) on embedded word priming effects. In the related prime conditions, target words were embedded at the beginning of prime stimuli and were followed either by a derivatio...

Does the processing of words with a transparent morphological structure benefit from this structure? Here we show that the flankers task provides an interesting novel angle on this well-researched issue. Participants saw transparent suffixed target words flanked by their stem (e.g. farm farmer farm), as well as pseudo-suffixed words and non-suffixe...

In this work we propose the use of Entropy as a new way to measure variability in pronunciations in pseudowords reading aloud: pseudowords where participants give many different pronunciations receive higher Entropy values. Monolingual adults, monolingual children, and bilingual children proficient in different European languages varying in orthogr...

The present study investigated whether morphological processing in reading is influenced by the orthographic consistency of a language or its morphological complexity. Developing readers in Grade 3 and skilled adult readers participated in a reading aloud task in four alphabetic orthographies (English, French, German, Italian), which differ in term...

The present study examined cross-linguistic differences in morphological processing in the visual and auditory modality. French and German adults performed a visual and auditory lexical decision task that involved the same translation-equivalent items. The focus of the study was on nonwords, which were constructed in a way that made it possible to...

The present study examined cross-linguistic differences in morphological processing in the visual and auditory modality. French and German adults performed a visual and auditory lexical decision task that involved the same translation-equivalent items. The focus of the study was on nonwords, which were constructed in a way that made it possible to...

Masked priming studies have shown that readers decompose morphologically complex words (read+er). Interindividual differences have been suggested to affect this phenomenon. However, its development is poorly understood. We addressed this issue by taking a longitudinal approach that allows greater rigor in establishing the relationship between grade...

It is well known that information from spoken language is integrated into reading processes, but the nature of these links and how they are acquired is less well understood. Recent evidence has suggested that predictions about the written form of newly learned spoken words are already generated prior to print exposure. We extend this work to morpho...

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...

The aim of the current research was to test the hypothesis that the activation of embedded words (e.g., the farm in farmhouse) is the starting point for the development of an abstract morphological parsing system in children's reading. To test this hypothesis, we examined the developmental trajectory of compound priming effects in third- and fifth-...

The time-course of morphological processing during spoken word recognition was investigated using event-related brain potentials (ERPs) in an auditory lexical decision task. We compared three different types of French words: truly suffixed (e.g., pochette ‘little pocket’ = poche ‘pocket’ + diminutive suffix -ette), pseudo-suffixed (e.g., mouette 's...

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According to an obligatory decomposition account of polymorphemic word recognition, a nonword that is composed of a real word plus derivational affix (e.g., teachen) should prime its stem (TEACH) to the same extent that a truly suffixed word does (e.g., teacher). The stem will be activated in both cases after the suffix is removed prior to the lexi...

In two experiments, we examined the functional locus of plural dominance in the French spoken word production system, where singulars and plurals share the same phonological word form. The materials included singular-dominant (singular more frequent than plural) and plural-dominant nouns (plural more frequent than singular). In Experiment 1, partic...

Recent evidence from visual word recognition points to the important role of embedded words, suggesting that embedded words are activated independently of whether they are accompanied by an affix or a non-affix. The goal of the present research was to more closely examine the mechanisms involved in embedded word activation, particularly with respec...

Background: In picture naming, both unimpaired and impaired speakers are usually better in naming singular than plural forms of the same noun, such as cat/cats. This singular-advantage is especially present in the case of singular-dominant nouns (e.g., table has higher surface frequency compared to its corresponding plural tables). However, for plu...

Much research suggests that words comprising more than one morpheme are decomposed into morphemes in the early stages of visual word recognition. In the present masked primed lexical decision study, we investigated whether or not decomposition occurs for both prefixed and suffixed nonwords, and for nonwords which comprise a stem and a non-morphemic...

Recent research investigating embedded stem priming effects with the masked priming paradigm and pseudoword primes (e.g., quickify–quick) has shown that priming effects can be obtained even when the embedded target word is followed by a non-morphological ending (e.g., quickald–quick). Here we examine the specific nature of such priming effects by t...

Current evidence suggests that morphologically complex words (e.g., farmer) are automatically segmented into their constituent morphemes (farm + er) during reading, a process referred to as “morpho-orthographic segmentation.” Intriguingly, the evidence also suggests that this segmentation process even operates on words with a pseudo-morphological s...

Skilled adult readers identify the first letter in a string of random consonants better than letters at any other position, and this advantage for the initial position is not seen with strings of symbols or familiar shapes. Here we examined the developmental trajectory of this first-letter advantage by testing children in Grades 1 to 5 of primary e...

In this study, we looked at masked morphological priming effects in German children and adults beyond mean response times by taking into account response time distributions. We conducted an experiment comparing suffixed word primes (kleidchen-KLEID), suffixed nonword primes (kleidtum-KLEID), nonsuffixed nonword primes (kleidekt-KLEID), and unrelate...

The Orthographic Depth Hypothesis [Katz, L., & Frost, R. (1992). The reading process is different for different orthographies: The orthographic depth hypothesis. In R. Frost & L. Katz (Eds.), Orthography, phonology, morphology, and meaning (pp. 67–84). Amsterdam: Elsevier Science] proposes cross-linguistic differences in the involvement of lexical...

Previous research has repeatedly revealed evidence for morpho-orthographic priming effects in suffixed words. However, evidence for the morphological chunking of prefixed words is sparse and ambiguous. The goal of the present study was to directly contrast the processing of prefixed and suffixed pseudowords within the same experiment. We carried ou...

A letter-search task was used to test the hypothesis that affixes are chunked during morphological processing and that such chunking might operate differently for prefixes and suffixes. Participants had to detect a letter target that was embedded either in a prefix or suffix (e.g., ‘R’ in propoint or filmure) or in a non-prefix beginning or non-suf...

The role of number dominance (singular vs. plural) in word production has revealed contrasting results in Dutch and English. Here, we compared the production of Dutch regular plural forms that are more frequent than their stems (plural-dominant plurals) to plurals that are less frequent than their stems (singular-dominant plurals) in a spoken pictu...

The role of number dominance (singular vs. plural) in word production has revealed contrasting results in Dutch and English. Here, we compared the production of Dutch regular plural forms that are more frequent than their stems (plural-dominant plurals) to plurals that are less frequent than their stems (singular-dominant plurals) in a spoken pictu...

This study looks at the effect of frequency on plural processing in English and German. Plural-dominant plural forms (e.g. ‘ears’, ‘mice’) are higher in frequency compared to their singular forms (‘ear’, ‘mouse’). In turn, singular-dominant plural forms (e.g. ‘clocks’) are lower in frequency compared to their singular forms. While plural dominance...

Many studies have previously reported that the recognition of a stem target (e.g., teach) is facilitated by the prior masked presentation of a prime consisting of a derived form of it (e.g., teacher). We conducted two lexical decision experiments to investigate masked morphological priming in Spanish. Experiment 1 showed that equal magnitudes of ma...

Recent evidence has revealed conflicting results regarding the influence of letter transpositions during the recognition of morphologically complex words. While some studies suggest that the disruption of the morpheme boundary through across-boundary transpositions (e.g., dar nk ess) leads to the absence of masked transposed-letter (TL) priming, ot...

Background: Plural dominance refers to the relative difference between the frequencies of a word in its singular and plural forms. Most of the evidence for theoretical accounts of plural dominance has come from psycholinguistic perception experiments (e.g., Baayen, Burani, & Schreuder, 1996; Baayen, Dijkstra, & Schreuder, 1997; Baayen, Schreuder, &...

Masked priming studies with adult readers have provided evidence for a form-based morpho-orthographic segmentation mechanism that "blindly" decomposes any word with the appearance of morphological complexity. The present studies investigated whether evidence for structural morphological decomposition can be obtained with developing readers. We used...

The present experiments were designed to explore the theory of early morpho-orthographic segmentation (Rastle, Davis, & New, Psychonomic Bulletin & Review 11,1090-1098, 2004), which postulates that written words with a true morphologically complex structure (cleaner) and those with a morphological pseudostructure (corner) are both decomposed into a...