Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

This paper argues for asymmetries in lexical architecture and function, based on a series of repetition priming experiments examining the representation and access of morphologically complex forms in English. These results point to modality differences in representation at the level of the lexical entry, and to marked differences in access from speech and from text. We argue that speech inputs can map directly onto abstract morphemic representations, while input from text seems to involve mediated access, via intervening orthographic representations of word form.