The Role of Morphological Information in Processing Pseudo-words in Italian L2 Learners: It’s a Matter of Experience
The productive use of morphological information is considered one of the possible ways in which speakers of a language understand and learn unknown words. In the present study we investigate if, and how, also adult L2 learners exploit morphological information to process unknown words by analyzing t...
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Ubiquity Press
2025-01-01
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| Series: | Journal of Cognition |
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| Online Access: | https://account.journalofcognition.org/index.php/up-j-jc/article/view/420 |
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| author | Simona Amenta Francesca Foppolo Linda Badan |
| author_facet | Simona Amenta Francesca Foppolo Linda Badan |
| author_sort | Simona Amenta |
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| description | The productive use of morphological information is considered one of the possible ways in which speakers of a language understand and learn unknown words. In the present study we investigate if, and how, also adult L2 learners exploit morphological information to process unknown words by analyzing the impact of language proficiency in the processing of novel derivations. Italian L2 learners, divided into three proficiency groups, participated in a lexical decision where pseudo-words could embed existing stems (e.g., sockle), suffixes (e.g., hettable), or both (novel derivations, e.g., quickify). Participants with low proficiency exhibited reduced accuracy and longer reaction times when presented with pseudo-words embedding a stem compared to those embedding a suffix. Conversely, participants with high proficiency demonstrated comparable accuracy in rejecting pseudo-words with real stems or real suffixes but required more time to reject pseudo-words embedding a suffix. In the case of novel derivations, accuracy (i.e., correct rejection) decreased and reaction time increased for all proficiency groups. Our results show that L2 learners exploit morphological information to process novel words. Most importantly, the ability to extract and exploit morphological information is linked to language proficiency. |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj-art-979f8888fe914d938db5e952afc7b1a2 |
| institution | Kabale University |
| issn | 2514-4820 |
| language | English |
| publishDate | 2025-01-01 |
| publisher | Ubiquity Press |
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| series | Journal of Cognition |
| spelling | doaj-art-979f8888fe914d938db5e952afc7b1a22025-02-11T05:36:32ZengUbiquity PressJournal of Cognition2514-48202025-01-0181141410.5334/joc.420419The Role of Morphological Information in Processing Pseudo-words in Italian L2 Learners: It’s a Matter of ExperienceSimona Amenta0https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0391-6164Francesca Foppolo1https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5044-7834Linda Badan2https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9195-2167Department of Psychology, University of Milano-Bicocca, p.zza dell’Ateneo Nuovo 1, 20126 Milan, IT; During the conceptualization of this work and data collection, Simona Amenta was affiliated with the Department of Experimental Psychology of Gent University, GentDepartment of Psychology, University of Milano-Bicocca, p.zza dell’Ateneo Nuovo 1, 20126 MilanDepartment of Humanities, University of Trento, via Tommaso Gar 14, 38122, Trento, IT; During the conceptualization of this work and data collection, Linda Badan was affiliated with the Department of Translation, Interpreting and Communication, Gent University, GentThe productive use of morphological information is considered one of the possible ways in which speakers of a language understand and learn unknown words. In the present study we investigate if, and how, also adult L2 learners exploit morphological information to process unknown words by analyzing the impact of language proficiency in the processing of novel derivations. Italian L2 learners, divided into three proficiency groups, participated in a lexical decision where pseudo-words could embed existing stems (e.g., sockle), suffixes (e.g., hettable), or both (novel derivations, e.g., quickify). Participants with low proficiency exhibited reduced accuracy and longer reaction times when presented with pseudo-words embedding a stem compared to those embedding a suffix. Conversely, participants with high proficiency demonstrated comparable accuracy in rejecting pseudo-words with real stems or real suffixes but required more time to reject pseudo-words embedding a suffix. In the case of novel derivations, accuracy (i.e., correct rejection) decreased and reaction time increased for all proficiency groups. Our results show that L2 learners exploit morphological information to process novel words. Most importantly, the ability to extract and exploit morphological information is linked to language proficiency.https://account.journalofcognition.org/index.php/up-j-jc/article/view/420novel derivationspseudowordsvisual word recognitionl2 processingmorphology |
| spellingShingle | Simona Amenta Francesca Foppolo Linda Badan The Role of Morphological Information in Processing Pseudo-words in Italian L2 Learners: It’s a Matter of Experience Journal of Cognition novel derivations pseudowords visual word recognition l2 processing morphology |
| title | The Role of Morphological Information in Processing Pseudo-words in Italian L2 Learners: It’s a Matter of Experience |
| title_full | The Role of Morphological Information in Processing Pseudo-words in Italian L2 Learners: It’s a Matter of Experience |
| title_fullStr | The Role of Morphological Information in Processing Pseudo-words in Italian L2 Learners: It’s a Matter of Experience |
| title_full_unstemmed | The Role of Morphological Information in Processing Pseudo-words in Italian L2 Learners: It’s a Matter of Experience |
| title_short | The Role of Morphological Information in Processing Pseudo-words in Italian L2 Learners: It’s a Matter of Experience |
| title_sort | role of morphological information in processing pseudo words in italian l2 learners it s a matter of experience |
| topic | novel derivations pseudowords visual word recognition l2 processing morphology |
| url | https://account.journalofcognition.org/index.php/up-j-jc/article/view/420 |
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