Parafoveal processing of prefixed words during eye fixations in reading: evidence against morphological influences on parafoveal preprocessing.

Two eye movement experiments were conducted to investigate whether the morphological constituents of a prefixed word influenced early word processing when English was read. Participants read sentences containing free-stem, bound-stem, or pseudoprefixed words, and the availability of the prefixed word morphemes in the parafovea was manipulated. Although preview benefit was greatest for the entire word, there was evidence that subsequent word processing was facilitated in both the prefix-only and the stem-only conditions. This effect was not influenced by word type. There was no evidence that morphological preprocessing occurred when morphological information was available in the parafovea. In addition, reading times for the target word did not differ for the different word types. Thus, there was no evidence to suggest that morphological constituents influence early word processing during reading. It is possible that morphological effects tend to be obscured when examined within a sentence context (although this phenomenon may be specific to English).