Morphology in Word Identification: A Word-Experience Model That Accounts for Morpheme Frequency Effects

In reading research, morphological processing and monomorphemic word identification have generally been treated separately. We describe a computational model that brings both kinds of reading together within a single framework. This model assumes that word knowledge—the orthography, phonology, and meaning of words—accumulates with experiences with individual words and that this knowledge is reflected in two functionally different aspects of word processing—familiarity and availability. We report simulations that demonstrate that the model accounts both for classical effects of frequency and consistency in simple word reading and for morphological effects in the reading of complex words. The morphology simulations naturally capture a distinction between inflectional and derivational morphology without defining this distinction a priori. We discuss the implications of our model for general issues in reading, including individual differences in reading ability.