Is inhibition involved in the processing of opaque compound words?

Abstract We examined whether inhibition skills were recruited during the processing of compound words. Using an individual differences perspective, we analyzed whether participants’ scores on the Stroop test predicted performance on lexical decision tasks involving compound words varying in their level of semantic opacity. The results show that inhibition is involved in the comprehension of fully opaque (e.g., hogwash) and fully transparent (e.g., blueberry) compound words, but we found no evidence for such an effect in the comprehension of partially opaque compound words (e.g., strawberry, jailbird).