Acta Psychologica Sinica

Abstract

The present experiments focused on the structure of access representation. Surface frequencies, cumulative morpheme frequencies, and semantic transparencies of Chinese two-character words were controlled. When transparencies were balanced, the cumulative morpheme frequency effect was found only in high surface frequency words but not in low frequency words. In the next experiment surface frequencies were controlled and cumulative morpheme frequencies and transparencies were varied. The responses of words with high cumulative frequencies were faster than that with low cumulative frequencies in transparent words. In opaque words, however, this response tendency was reversed, namely, the responses of words with high cumulative frequencies were slower than that with low cumulative frequencies. The two experiments implied that both word and morpheme units received activation from visual input and there were connections between them. These connections were positive between transparent words and their morphemes, negative between opaque words and their morphemes, and would be enhanced with surface frequencies.

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