Processing Verbal Inflection in Native and Non-Native Spanish

The role of morphological complexity in visual word recognition has recently been studied in detail both with native speakers and second language (L2) learners. The present study investigates how morphologically complex words (such as walk-walked) are processed by native speakers of Spanish and English learners of Spanish as an L2. Moreover, the study examines factors such as proficiency and lexical decoding ability to see whether they can predict individual variability in the sensitivity that L2 learners show to morphological information. Subjects participated in two experiments, a lexical decision task (using a long-lag priming experiment), and a gating task, in order to assess their lexical decoding ability. Results show that native speakers of Spanish can decompose inflected verbs into their constituents, while L2 learners need to rely more on whole word storage in order to process the same forms. Furthermore, neither proficiency nor decoding ability were found to be related to individual differences in morphological processing in the learner group. These results suggest that native speakers and L2 learners rely on different mechanisms in order to process inflectional morphology