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This article introduces the Children and Young People’s Books-Lexicon (CYP-LEX), a large-scale lexical database derived from books popular with children and young people in the United Kingdom. CYP-LEX includes 1,200 books evenly distributed across three age bands (7–9, 10–12, 13+) and comprises over 70 million tokens and over 105,000 types. For each word in each age band, we provide its raw and Zipf-transformed frequencies, all parts-of-speech in which it occurs with raw frequency and lemma for each occurrence, and measures of count-based contextual diversity. Together and individually, the three CYP-LEX age bands contain substantially more words than any other publicly available database of books for primary and secondary school children. Most of these words are very low in frequency, and a substantial proportion of the words in each age band do not occur on British television. Although the three age bands share some very frequent words, they differ substantially regarding words that occur less frequently, and this pattern also holds at the level of individual books. Initial analyses of CYP-LEX illustrate why independent reading constitutes a challenge for children and young people, and they also underscore the importance of reading widely for the development of reading expertise. Overall, CYP-LEX provides unprecedented information into the nature of vocabulary in books that British children aged 7+ read, and is a highly valuable resource for those studying reading and language development.

Most printed Chinese words are compounds built from the combination of meaningful characters. Yet, there is a poor understanding of how individual characters contribute to the recognition of compounds. Using a megastudy of Chinese word recognition (Tse et al., 2017), we examined how the lexical decision of existing and novel Chinese compounds was influenced by two properties of individual characters: family size (the number of distinct words that embed a character) and family semantic consistency (the average semantic relatedness between a character and all words containing it). Results revealed that both variables influence word and nonword processing: Words are recognized more quickly and accurately when they contain characters that occur frequently across different words and that make consistent meaningful contributions to those words, while nonwords containing those types of characters are rejected more slowly. These findings suggest that the learning of individual characters is based not only on the quantity of experience with them but also on the reliability of the semantic information they communicate. In addition, readers are able to generalize character knowledge acquired from previous word experiences to their daily encounters with familiar and unfamiliar words. We close by discussing how word experience shapes character knowledge when different ways of calculating family properties are considered.

English spelling provides multiple cues to word meaning, and these cues are readily exploited by skilled readers. In two crowdsourcing studies, we tested skilled readers’ sensitivity to a large number of morphological as well as nonmorphological orthographic cues by asking them to classify nonwords as adjectives or nouns. We observed a substantial variability across individuals and orthographic cues. In this paper, we discuss some sources of this variation. Specifically, we found consistent correlations between readers’ sensitivity to cues and their performance on language tasks (reading, spelling, and author recognition tests) suggesting that reading experience is critical for assimilating spelling-to-meaning regularity from written language. Further, we identified characteristics that may be important for the learning and exploitation of orthographic cues that are related to the nature of their function and use in context.

Syllable frequency effects in production tasks are interpreted as evidence that speakers retrieve precompiled articulatory programs for high frequency syllables from a mental syllabary. They have not been found reliably in English, nor isolated to the phonetic encoding processes during which the syllabary is thought to be accessed. In this experiment, 48 participants produced matched high- and novel/low-frequency syllables in a near-replication of Laganaro and Alario’s [(2006) On the locus of the syllable frequency effect in speech production. Journal of Memory and Language, 55(2), 198–196, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jml.2006.05.001] production conditions: immediate naming, naming following an unfilled delay, and naming after delay filled by concurrent articulation. Immediate naming was faster for high frequency syllables, demonstrating a robust syllable frequency effect in English. There was no high frequency advantage in either delayed naming condition, leaving open the question of whether syllable frequency effects arise during phonological or phonetic encoding.

Although masked stem priming (e.g., dealer–DEAL) is one of the most established effects in visual word identification, it is less clear whether primes and targets sharing a suffix (e.g., kindness–WILDNESS) also yield facilitation. In a new take on this issue, we show that prime nonwords facilitate lexical decisions to target words ending with the same suffix (sheeter–TEACHER) compared to a condition where the critical suffix was substituted by another one (sheetal–TEACHER) or by an unrelated nonmorphological ending (sheetub– TEACHER). We also show that this effect is genuinely morphological, as no priming emerged in noncomplex items with the same orthographic characteristics (sportel–BROTHEL vs. sportic–BROTHEL vs. sportur–BROTHEL). In a further experiment, we took advantage of these results to assess whether suffixes are recognized in a position-specific fashion. Masked suffix priming did not emerge when the relative order of stems and suffixes was reversed in the prime nonwords—ersheet did not yield any time saving in the identification of teacher as compared to either alsheet or obsheet. We take these results to show that –er was not identified as a morpheme in ersheet, thus indicating that suffix identification is position specific. This conclusion is in line with data on interference effects in nonword rejection and strongly constrains theoretical proposals on how complex words are identified. In particular, because these findings were reported in a masked priming paradigm, they suggest that positional constraints operate early, most likely at a prelexical level of morpho-orthographic analysis.

There is broad consensus that printed complex words are identified on the basis of their constituent morphemes. This fact raises the issue of how the word identification system codes for morpheme position, hence allowing it to distinguish between words like overhang and hangover, and to recognize that preheat is a word, whereas heatpre is not. Recent data have shown that suffixes are identified as morphemes only when they occur at the ends of letter strings (Crepaldi, Rastle, & Davis, 2010), which supports the general proposal that the word identification system is sensitive to morpheme positional constraints. This proposal leads to the prediction that the identification of free stems should occur in a position‐independent fashion, given that free stems can occur anywhere within complex words (e.g., overdress and dresser). In Experiment 1, we show that the rejection time of transposed-constituent pseudocompounds (e.g., moonhoney) is longer than that of matched control nonwords (e.g., moonbasin), suggesting that honey and moon are identified within moonhoney, and that these morpheme representations activate the representation for the word honeymoon. In Experiments 2 and 3, we demonstrate that the masked presentation of transposed-constituent pseudocompounds (e.g., moonhoney) facilitates the identification of compound words (honeymoon). In contrast, monomorphemic control pairs do not produce a similar pattern (i.e., rickmave did not prime maverick), indicating that the effect for moonhoney pairs is genuinely morphological in nature. These results demonstrate that stem representations differ from affix representations in terms of their positional constraints, providing a challenge to all existing theories of morphological processing

Recent evidence has shown that suffixes influence nonword processing only when they follow an existing stem (e.g., in 'shootment', but not in 'mentshoot'), suggesting that their mental representation is position-locked (Crepaldi, Rastle & Davis, 2010). These results raise questions about the nature of morpheme position coding, an issue that has typically been neglected in morphological research; although it is clear that morphemes must be coded for position during word identification (otherwise we could not distinguish between words like 'overhang' and 'hangover'), even the most recent theoretical attempts (e.g., Crepaldi, Rastle, Coltheart & Nickels, 2010; Taft, 2006) have not addressed this issue. In the present experiments we asked whether prefix and stem identification is also sensitive to positional constraints (as suffix identification is). In Experiment 1 we showed that the rejection time of pseudo-prefixed nonwords (e.g., predrink) is longer than that of matched control nonwords (e.g., pledrink), which was not the case when the prefix followed the stem (e.g., drinkpre took as long as drinkple to be rejected). This result suggests that prefix identification is position-specific. In Experiment 2 we showed that the rejection time of reversed compounds (e.g., moonhoney) is longer than that of matched control nonwords (e.g., moonbasin), indicating that 'honey' and 'moon' were identified within 'moonhoney', and the representations of these morphemes then activated (at least partially) the word 'honeymoon'. This result suggests that stems are coded is a position-independent fashion. This latter conclusion was strengthened by the results of Experiment 3, in which the masked presentation of reversed compounds (e.g., moonhoney) facilitated the identification of compound words (honeymoon). In contrast monomorphemic control pairs did not produce a similar pattern (i.e., rickmave did not prime maverick), indicating that the effect for ‘moonhoney’ pairs was not due simply

Previous research strongly suggest that morphologically-complex words are recognized in terms of their constituent morphemes. A question thus arises as to how the recognition system codes for morpheme position within words, given that it needs to distinguish morphological anagrams like overhang and hangover. The present study focused specifically on whether the recognition of suffixes occurs in a position‑specific fashion. Experiments 1 and 2 revealed that morphologically-complex nonwords (gasful) are rejected more slowly than orthographic controls (gasfil), but that the same interference effect is not present when the morphemic constituents are reversed (fulgas versus filgas). Experiment 3 went further in demonstrating that reversing the morphemes within words (e.g., nesskind) does not yield morpheme interference effects against orthographic controls (e.g., nusskind). These results strongly suggest that suffix identification is position-specific, which poses important constraints on the further development of models of morphological processing

Recent evidence has shown that suffixes are identified within nonwords only when they follow an existing stem (e.g., in 'shootment', but not in 'mentshoot'), thus suggesting that their mental representation is position‑locked (Crepaldi, Rastle & Davis, 2010). These results rise the important issue of morpheme position coding, which has always been neglected in morphological research; although it is clear that morphemes are coded for position in the word identification system (or otherwise we could not distinguish between words like 'overhang' and 'hangover'), even the most recent theoretical attempts (e.g., Crepaldi, Rastle, Coltheart & Nickels, 2010; Taft, 2006) have ignored this issue. In this study we ask whether stem and prefix identification is sensitive to positional constraints as suffix identification is. To address this question we carried out two lexical decision experiments capitalizing on the well‑established morpheme interference effect as a diagnostic for morpheme identification (e.g., Taft & Forster, 1975); this effect refers to the fact that nonwords comprising existing morphemes (e.g., 'shootment') are rejected more slowly than nonwords that do not have a morphological structure (e.g., 'shootmant'). In Experiment 1 we show that the rejection time of reversed compounds (e.g., 'moonhoney') is longer than that of matched control nonwords (e.g., 'moonbasin'). Because it has been shown that non‑morphological transposed‑halves nonwords (e.g., 'dulesche') do not activate the representation of their corresponding words (e.g., 'schedule'), this effect must be morphological in nature; readers must have thus identified 'honey' and 'moon' within 'moonhoney', and the representations of these morphemes must have activated (at least partially) the word 'honeymoon'. This account implies that stem identification is position-independent. In Experiment 2 we show that the rejection time of pseudo‑prefixed nonwords (e.g., 'predrink') is longer than that of matched contr

Crepaldi, Rastle and Davis (2010) have shown that suffix identification is sensitive to positional constraints. In this study we demonstrate that: (i) the rejection time of pseudo‐prefixed nonwords (e.g., predrink) is longer than that of matched control nonwords (e.g., pledrink), but the effect disappears when the prefix follows the stem (e.g., drinkpre took as long as drinkple to be rejected); (ii) the rejection time of reversed compounds (e.g., applepine) is longer than that of matched control nonwords (e.g., baconpine); (iii) shifted‐halves pseudo‐compounds (e.g., fireback) prime their corresponding compound words (backfire), whereas shifted‐halves simple nonwords (e.g., rickmave) do not prime their corresponding simple word (maverick). These data allow us to generalize Crepaldi et al.'s (2010) findings and show that stem identification is position‐independent, whereas affix identification is position‐specific.

Crepaldi, Rastle and Davis (2010) have demonstrated that morpheme interference effects do not emerge in morphologically structured psuedowords where a suffix precedes a stem (e.g., mentshoot is as difficult to reject as mantshoot), showing that suffix identification is sensitive to positional constraints. In this study we investigate the same issue in the other types of English morphemes, i.e., stems and prefixes. In two lexical decision experiments, we show that (i) the rejection time of reversed compounds (e.g., moonhoney) is longer than that of matched control nonwords (e.g., moonbasin); and (ii) the rejection time of pseudo‐prefixed nonwords (e.g., predrink) is longer than that of matched control nonwords (e.g., pledrink), but the effect disappears when the prefix follows the stem (e.g., drinkpre took as long as drinkple to be rejected). These data extend Crepaldi et al.'s (2010) findings and show that stem identification is position‐independent, whereas affix identification is position‐specific.

Great effort has been put in recent years on understanding how letter position is represented in the orthographic code (e.g., Kinoshita & Norris, 2009). The same issue also emerges at the morphological level, as the system must obviously be able to distinguish XY from YX, and to understand that PREHEAT is an existing word, while HEATPRE is not. A first crucial issue on this respect is whether or not morpheme representations are position-specific. In Experiment 1, we compared the rejection times obtained by normal readers on (i) nonwords made up of a stem and a suffix in their natural position (e.g., PASSMENT), (ii) nonwords including a stem and a non-morphological ending (PASSMANT), (iii) nonwords in which an existing suffix precedes an existing stem (MENTPASS), and (iv) nonwords in which a non-morphological word ending precedes an existing stem (MANTPASS). While rejection times were slower in condition (i) than in condition (ii) - replicating the morpheme interference effect observed by Caramazza et al. (1988) -, (iii) and (iv) elicited comparably fast responses, thus suggesting that MENT was not recognised as a morpheme at word onset. These results were replicated in Experiment 2, where orthographically implausible words (e.g., HYENA) were used as fillers to make sure that participants could not reject nonwords in conditions (iii) and (iv) just on the basis of their unfamiliar orthography (suffixes are in fact very infrequent word onsets). The claim that suffixes are not recognised when occurring in word-initial position was tested even more severely in Experiment 3, where scrambled-morpheme nonwords (e.g., NESSKIND) were used; in fact, if morphemic representations were even loosely activated by these nonwords, they would pass on this activation to an existing word representation (KINDNESS), thus maximising the interference effect. However, rejection times on scrambled-morpheme nonwords did not differ from those that emerged on orthographic controls (e.g., NELSKIN

New evidence has emerged in recent years suggesting that the recognition of morphologically‐complex words starts with a rapid morphemic segmentation that is orthographically based (Rastle & Davis, 2008). This evidence appears inconsistent with data showing masked priming of irregular inflections over their base forms (e.g., fell‐FALL) as compared to orthographically matched control words (fill‐FALL; Pastizzo & Feldman, 2002), suggesting the existence of morphological bounds independent of orthography at the earliest stage of printed word recognition. However, these data are not completely consistent and have also been challenged by Voga & Grainger (2004) and Kielar et al. (2008). We carried out a masked priming experiment (SOA=42 ms) with a lexical decision task comparing the facilitation triggered by (i) irregular inflected primes (e.g., dug‐DIG), (ii) orthographically‐matched, but morphologically unrelated primes (dog‐DIG) and (iii) completely unrelated primes (pop‐DIG). Results showed that irregular inflections facilitate recognition of their stems significantly more than orthographically matched (t36=2.80, p < .01) and unrelated primes (t36=3.33, p < .005; see Table 1). As several irregular present‐past pairs form isles of sub‐regularity (e.g., bend‐bent, lend‐lent, send‐sent), this effect might generalize to unrelated words showing the same orthographic pattern (tend‐tent). This has been tested in Experiment 2, which was completely identical to Experiment 1 except for the fact that pseudo‐present‐past pairs were used (e.g., bake‐book, ray‐raid and peak‐poke). Results showed no effect whatsoever in this condition (F2,72=.24, p=.78; see Table 1). Across‐experiment ANOVAs were also carried out to check for interaction, which was significant by subjects (F2,152=4.02, p=.02) and approached significance by items (F2,144=2.59, p=.08), showing that irregular masked priming effect is truly morphological in nature. These data are at odds with the existence of a pre‐lexic

New evidence has emerged in recent years suggesting that the recognition of morphologically‐complex words starts with a rapid morphemic segmentation that is orthographically based (Rastle & Davis, 2008). This evidence appears inconsistent with evidence showing that masked priming of irregular inflections (e.g., stole‐STEAL) does not differ from masked identity priming (Forster et al., 1987) or masked priming of regular inflections (e.g., walked-WALK; Meunier et al., 2004). We carried out a masked priming experiment (SOA=42 ms) with a lexical decision task comparing the facilitation triggered by (i) irregular inflected primes (e.g., dug‐DIG), (ii) orthographically‐matched, but morphologically unrelated primes (dog‐DIG) and (iii) completely unrelated primes (pop‐DIG). Results showed that irregular inflections facilitate recognition of their stems significantly more than orthographically matched primes. These data are at odds with the existence of a pre‐lexical, orthographically‐based moprhological stage, unless very early feedback from central, semantically- and syntactically‐based stages of morphological processing is hypothesized.

For over 15 years, masked phonological effects have been offered as evidence that phonology plays a leading role in visual word recognition. the existence of these effects - along with their theoretical implications - has, however, been disputed. The authors present three sources of evidence relevant to an assessment of the existence and implications of these effects. first, they present an exhaustive meta-analytic literature review, in which they evaluate the strength of the evidence for masked phonological priming effects on English visual word processing. Second, they present two original experiments that demonstrate a small but significant masked priming effect on English visual lexical decision, which persists in conditions that may discourage phonological recoding. finally, they assesss the theory of visual word recognition offered by the DRC model (Coltheart, Rastle, Perry, Langdon, & Ziegler, 2001) in the context of their empirical data. Through numerous simulations with this model, they argue that masked phonological priming effects might best be captured by a weak phonological (i.e.,dual-access) theory in which lexical decisions are made on the basis of phonological information.

For over 15 years, masked phonological effects have been offered as evidence that phonology plays a leading role in visual word recognition. the existence of these effects - along with their theoretical implications - has, however, been disputed. The authors present three sources of evidence relevant to an assessment of the existence and implications of these effects. first, they present an exhaustive meta-analytic literature review, in which they evaluate the strength of the evidence for masked phonological priming effects on English visual word processing. Second, they present two original experiments that demonstrate a small but significant masked priming effect on English visual lexical decision, which persists in conditions that may discourage phonological recoding. finally, they assesss the theory of visual word recognition offered by the DRC model (Coltheart, Rastle, Perry, Langdon, & Ziegler, 2001) in the context of their empirical data. Through numerous simulations with this model, they argue that masked phonological priming effects might best be captured by a weak phonological (i.e.,dual-access) theory in which lexical decisions are made on the basis of phonological information.

For over 15 years, masked phonological effects have been offered as evidence that phonology plays a leading role in visual word recognition. the existence of these effects - along with their theoretical implications - has, however, been disputed. The authors present three sources of evidence relevant to an assessment of the existence and implications of these effects. first, they present an exhaustive meta-analytic literature review, in which they evaluate the strength of the evidence for masked phonological priming effects on English visual word processing. Second, they present two original experiments that demonstrate a small but significant masked priming effect on English visual lexical decision, which persists in conditions that may discourage phonological recoding. finally, they assesss the theory of visual word recognition offered by the DRC model (Coltheart, Rastle, Perry, Langdon, & Ziegler, 2001) in the context of their empirical data. Through numerous simulations with this model, they argue that masked phonological priming effects might best be captured by a weak phonological (i.e.,dual-access) theory in which lexical decisions are made on the basis of phonological information.

For over 15 years, masked phonological effects have been offered as evidence that phonology plays a leading role in visual word recognition. the existence of these effects - along with their theoretical implications - has, however, been disputed. The authors present three sources of evidence relevant to an assessment of the existence and implications of these effects. first, they present an exhaustive meta-analytic literature review, in which they evaluate the strength of the evidence for masked phonological priming effects on English visual word processing. Second, they present two original experiments that demonstrate a small but significant masked priming effect on English visual lexical decision, which persists in conditions that may discourage phonological recoding. finally, they assesss the theory of visual word recognition offered by the DRC model (Coltheart, Rastle, Perry, Langdon, & Ziegler, 2001) in the context of their empirical data. Through numerous simulations with this model, they argue that masked phonological priming effects might best be captured by a weak phonological (i.e.,dual-access) theory in which lexical decisions are made on the basis of phonological information.

For over 15 years, masked phonological effects have been offered as evidence that phonology plays a leading role in visual word recognition. the existence of these effects - along with their theoretical implications - has, however, been disputed. The authors present three sources of evidence relevant to an assessment of the existence and implications of these effects. first, they present an exhaustive meta-analytic literature review, in which they evaluate the strength of the evidence for masked phonological priming effects on English visual word processing. Second, they present two original experiments that demonstrate a small but significant masked priming effect on English visual lexical decision, which persists in conditions that may discourage phonological recoding. finally, they assesss the theory of visual word recognition offered by the DRC model (Coltheart, Rastle, Perry, Langdon, & Ziegler, 2001) in the context of their empirical data. Through numerous simulations with this model, they argue that masked phonological priming effects might best be captured by a weak phonological (i.e.,dual-access) theory in which lexical decisions are made on the basis of phonological information.

For over 15 years, masked phonological effects have been offered as evidence that phonology plays a leading role in visual word recognition. the existence of these effects - along with their theoretical implications - has, however, been disputed. The authors present three sources of evidence relevant to an assessment of the existence and implications of these effects. first, they present an exhaustive meta-analytic literature review, in which they evaluate the strength of the evidence for masked phonological priming effects on English visual word processing. Second, they present two original experiments that demonstrate a small but significant masked priming effect on English visual lexical decision, which persists in conditions that may discourage phonological recoding. finally, they assesss the theory of visual word recognition offered by the DRC model (Coltheart, Rastle, Perry, Langdon, & Ziegler, 2001) in the context of their empirical data. Through numerous simulations with this model, they argue that masked phonological priming effects might best be captured by a weak phonological (i.e.,dual-access) theory in which lexical decisions are made on the basis of phonological information.

For over 15 years, masked phonological effects have been offered as evidence that phonology plays a leading role in visual word recognition. the existence of these effects - along with their theoretical implications - has, however, been disputed. The authors present three sources of evidence relevant to an assessment of the existence and implications of these effects. first, they present an exhaustive meta-analytic literature review, in which they evaluate the strength of the evidence for masked phonological priming effects on English visual word processing. Second, they present two original experiments that demonstrate a small but significant masked priming effect on English visual lexical decision, which persists in conditions that may discourage phonological recoding. finally, they assesss the theory of visual word recognition offered by the DRC model (Coltheart, Rastle, Perry, Langdon, & Ziegler, 2001) in the context of their empirical data. Through numerous simulations with this model, they argue that masked phonological priming effects might best be captured by a weak phonological (i.e.,dual-access) theory in which lexical decisions are made on the basis of phonological information.

For over 15 years, masked phonological effects have been offered as evidence that phonology plays a leading role in visual word recognition. the existence of these effects - along with their theoretical implications - has, however, been disputed. The authors present three sources of evidence relevant to an assessment of the existence and implications of these effects. first, they present an exhaustive meta-analytic literature review, in which they evaluate the strength of the evidence for masked phonological priming effects on English visual word processing. Second, they present two original experiments that demonstrate a small but significant masked priming effect on English visual lexical decision, which persists in conditions that may discourage phonological recoding. finally, they assesss the theory of visual word recognition offered by the DRC model (Coltheart, Rastle, Perry, Langdon, & Ziegler, 2001) in the context of their empirical data. Through numerous simulations with this model, they argue that masked phonological priming effects might best be captured by a weak phonological (i.e.,dual-access) theory in which lexical decisions are made on the basis of phonological information.

For over 15 years, masked phonological effects have been offered as evidence that phonology plays a leading role in visual word recognition. the existence of these effects - along with their theoretical implications - has, however, been disputed. The authors present three sources of evidence relevant to an assessment of the existence and implications of these effects. first, they present an exhaustive meta-analytic literature review, in which they evaluate the strength of the evidence for masked phonological priming effects on English visual word processing. Second, they present two original experiments that demonstrate a small but significant masked priming effect on English visual lexical decision, which persists in conditions that may discourage phonological recoding. finally, they assesss the theory of visual word recognition offered by the DRC model (Coltheart, Rastle, Perry, Langdon, & Ziegler, 2001) in the context of their empirical data. Through numerous simulations with this model, they argue that masked phonological priming effects might best be captured by a weak phonological (i.e.,dual-access) theory in which lexical decisions are made on the basis of phonological information.

For over 15 years, masked phonological effects have been offered as evidence that phonology plays a leading role in visual word recognition. the existence of these effects - along with their theoretical implications - has, however, been disputed. The authors present three sources of evidence relevant to an assessment of the existence and implications of these effects. first, they present an exhaustive meta-analytic literature review, in which they evaluate the strength of the evidence for masked phonological priming effects on English visual word processing. Second, they present two original experiments that demonstrate a small but significant masked priming effect on English visual lexical decision, which persists in conditions that may discourage phonological recoding. finally, they assesss the theory of visual word recognition offered by the DRC model (Coltheart, Rastle, Perry, Langdon, & Ziegler, 2001) in the context of their empirical data. Through numerous simulations with this model, they argue that masked phonological priming effects might best be captured by a weak phonological (i.e.,dual-access) theory in which lexical decisions are made on the basis of phonological information.