Abstract: Four experiments investigated the role of morphemes in the recognition ofChinese two--character words and its mutation in the bine course of processing. In allof the experiments, semantic priming procedure was used and Chinese reversible wordsas primer. In Exp 1, it was found that the presentation of a reversible word can,when SOA is 157ms, facilitate not only the lexical decision of a target which hassemantic relation with the reversible word, but also that of a target which hassemantic relation with its reversed form. There was no difference of priming effectsbetween the two conditions. In Exp 2 (SOA = 314ms) and Exp 3 (SOA = 57ms), theresultS showed that the presentation of a reversible word can significantly facilitate onlythe decision of one of its semantically related words, but not that of one which hassemantical relation with its reversed form. These results were also obtained in Exp 4which was controlled more strictly. Three points were concluded. First, the morphemewhiz played some roles in the recognition of words, but its activation was not anecessary stage. Second, in the process of recognition, the antivation of morphemeunits came through from weaness to strength, then to weakness gradually, while thatof whole word units was constantly strengthened.Third, the information of the positionof morphemes was processed later than that of morpheme units themselves.

Key words: reversible words, morphemes, lexical access