Evidence for a domain-general mechanism underlying the suffixation preference in language

The ability to distinguish between an inflectional derivation of a target word, which is a variant of the target, and a completely new word is an important task of language acquisition. In an attempt to explain the ability to solve this problem, it has been proposed that the beginning of the word is its most psychologically salient portion. However, it is not clear whether this phenomenon is specific to language. The three reported experiments address this issue. Experiments 1 and 2 established that suffixation-type preferences occur in language and in domains outside of language and that it is plausible that this same mechanism could account for alternative types of inflectional morphology. Experiment 3 indicated that the suffixation preference is both flexible and transferable across domains. In combination, these experiments suggest that the suffixation preference is driven by a cognitive mechanism that is both domain-general and flexible in nature.