| Article ID | Journal | Published Year | Pages | File Type |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 919918 | Acta Psychologica | 2012 | 9 Pages |
Previous research showed that handwriting production is mediated by linguistically oriented processing units such as syllables and graphemes. The goal of this study was to investigate whether French adults also activate another kind of unit that is more related to semantics than phonology, namely morphemes. Experiment 1 revealed that letter duration and inter-letter intervals were longer for suffixed words than for pseudo-suffixed words. These results suggest that the handwriting production system chunks the letter components of the root and suffix into morpheme-sized units. Experiment 2 compared the production of prefixed and pseudo-prefixed words. The results did not yield significant differences. This asymmetry between suffix and prefix processing has also been observed in other linguistic tasks. In suffixed words, the suffix would be processed on-line during the production of the root, in an analytic fashion. Prefixed words, in contrast, seem to be processed without decomposition, as pseudo-affixed words.
► We examined whether handwriting production is mediated by semantic units (morphemes). ► Participants wrote prefixed/suffixed and pseudo-affixed words on a digitiser. ► Writing suffixed words requires more processing than to pseudo-suffixed words. ► Models of handwriting should include a processing level that activates morpheme units.
