The Ambiguous Morpheme Processing in Chinese Compound Word Recognition in Deaf Readers

Abstract

This study used event-related potentials (ERPs) to examine how deaf individuals process ambiguous morphemes during Chinese compound word recognition in a masked priming lexical decision paradigm. Ambiguous morphemes were classified as balanced or biased, and two experiments employed a 3 × 2 within-subject design. Each morpheme’s two meanings served as both primes and targets. The independent variables were prime type (meaning1 vs. meaning2 vs. unrelated) and target type (meaning1 vs. meaning2), with meaning1 being the dominant meaning and meaning2 being the subordinate meaning for biased morphemes. In the N250 (sublexical processing), balanced morphemes showed a main effect of prime type: any orthographically similar prime elicited priming. In the N400 (semantic processing), an interaction of prime and target type emerged, with only contextually congruent meanings activated. For biased morphemes, interactions were observed across N250 and N400 stages. The dominant meaning was consistently activated: when the target was dominant, both meanings showed priming; when the target was subordinate, only the subordinate meaning produced priming. These results reveal a dissociation in how deaf readers process ambiguous morphemes: balanced morphemes rely on contextual information, whereas biased morphemes are influenced by meaning frequency. The findings provide novel insights into the temporal dynamics of morpheme-based lexical access in deaf Chinese readers, with implications for reading and vocabulary instruction.