ERIC Number: EJ1405189
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2023
Pages: 31
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0278-7393
EISSN: EISSN-1939-1285
Carport and Carpet: Effects of Compound and Pseudocompound Word Structures on Typing
Christina L. Gagné; Thomas L. Spalding; Alexander Taikh
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, v49 n12 p2003-2033 2023
Typing slows at the middle of the word. The exact nature of the slowdown is still disputed. Research on attentional and motoric effects in typing suggests that the slowdown is purely a function of chunking of letters in creating the motor output; this approach posits no further influence of linguistic information during output. Research from a psycholinguistic perspective does posit lexical and sublexical effects during output and explains the midword slowing as a function of slowdowns at the boundaries of sublexical units. Across four experiments, using three different typing tasks, we investigated the typing of compound ("schoolteacher") and pseudocompound ("carpet") words. Typing at the midword region is sensitive to the morphological structure of the word and to linguistic properties of the word and its (pseudo)constituents (e.g., linguistic information about "school" and "teacher" affects "schoolteacher," and "car" and "pet" affects "carpet"). These findings suggest that typing compounds involves a hierarchical plan consisting of two separate motor plans for each constituent executed sequentially such that the output of letters is sensitive to the number of letters within that plan, the position of the sequence in the hierarchy (e.g., first vs. second constituent), and the morphemic structure of the to-be-typed word. Surprisingly, given that pseudocompound lexical representations should not include the pseudoconstituents and given that our tasks in the first three experiments demand full access to the lexical representation before typing, pseudocompound typing is also sensitive to the pseudoconstituent characteristics, suggesting that, during typing, the system attempts to build a compound-like structure.
Descriptors: Syntax, Psycholinguistics, Psychomotor Objectives, Morphology (Languages), Word Order, Spelling, Foreign Countries, English, Computer Use, Writing (Composition)
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: Canada
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A
Data File: URL: https://era.library.ualberta.ca/