Equivalent inter- and intramodality long-term priming: Evidence for a common lexicon for words seen and words heard

Abstract

A frequent experimental observation within implicit memory paradigms is that word priming is superior when the prime is presented in the same modality as the test word (visual-study-visual-test [VV] and auditory-studyauditory-test [AA]), as compared with when the prime is presented in a different modality (auditory-study-visualtest [AV] and visual-study-auditory-test [VA]). This frequent observation has motivated two important theoretical conclusions.One conclusion is in respect to the issue of whether the same lexicon underlies visual and auditory word recognition. In Morton's (1969) original logogen model, a word's representation in long-term memory (its logogen) is strengthened by both visual and auditory experiences with the word. A logogen's strength is measured by the ease, or speed, with which the logogen reaches a criterion level of activation. Morton's original proposal could not be preserved, however, in the face of experiments demonstrating substantial intramodal priming but negligible intermodal priming (e.g., Morton, 1979). A key feature of the original logogen theory was that once a logogen is made to fire, either by sight or by sound, it returns only slowly to its original state. Consequently, if the two modalities share the same logogen system, an earlier auditory experience of a word must help a later visual experience of that same word, and vice versa. Furthermore, an earlier experience in a modality different from the later experience should be as beneficial as an earlier experience in the same modality. Without convincing evidence in favor of the latter expectations, Morton (1979Morton ( , 1980Morton ( , 1982 was forced to distinguish two memory systems, one for words as read and one for words as heard. Any communication between the two stores could occur only through what he called the cognitive system-the site of meanings, cognitive strategies, and decision making. Most subsequent discussions of the relation between perceiving words by ear and by eye have sided with Morton's final assessment of independent lexicons (e.g., Coltheart, Rastle, Perry, Langdon, & Ziegler, 2001;Ellis & Young, 1996;Patterson & Sewell, 1987). Indeed, Morton's conclusion was a primary motivation for the development of dual-route theory (see the historical survey in Coltheart et al., 2001).The other conclusion, motivated by superior priming in within-modality than in cross-modality conditions, is in respect to the issue of what underlies the distinction between implicit and explicit memory measures. One interpretation is that the two measures index two separate memory systems (e.g., Tulving & Schacter, 1990). Another is that they reflect a difference between the kinds of processes and conditions shared between the original experiencing of an event (call it study) and the subsequent testing of the memory for that event (e.g., Blaxton, 1989;Roediger & Blaxton, 1987). The latter interpretation is continuous with the ideas of transfer-appropriate processing (TAP; Morris, Bransford, & Franks, 1977) and encoding specific...

Cross-modal evaluative priming: Emotional sounds influence the processing of emotion words.

“…Cross-modal semantic priming has proved useful in testing theories in several different cognitive domains. For example, Lukatela, Eaton, Moreno, and Turvey (2007) asked whether a common lexicon underlies words seen and words heard, and argued for a single lexicon based on strong cross-modal semantic priming. Furthermore, one classic view of word recognition is that activation flows from orthography (written) to phonology (sounds).…”

Are CORNER and BROTHER morphologically complex? Not in the long term

“…Here too, primes can be shown to influence the processing of targets that are presented in another modality, but an oft-replicated observation is that priming is substantially stronger if the prime and target are presented in the same modality (for reviews, see Kirsner, Dunn, & Standen, 1989, and Roediger & McDermott, 1993; for one notable exception, see Lukatela, Eaton, Moreno, & Turvey, 2007). This pattern has been taken as evidence that long-term identity priming occurs (at least in part) at an early, modality-specific level of representation (Kirsner et al, 1989; Schacter, 1992).…”

Listeners and Readers Generalise Their Experience With Word Meanings Across Modalities

“…a unimodal over cross-modal priming advantage, compared to a between-subject manipulation of modality. This finding is thought to reflect voluntary encoding strategies and/or the increased attention drawn to perceptual features of the stimuli in mixed modality trial blocks (Brown, Neblett, Jones, & Mitchell, 1991;Lukatela, Eaton, Moreno, & Turvey, 2007;Mulligan, 2011). This previous work suggests that the present studies may have been biased toward observing a unimodal priming advantage, making the lack of such an advantage even more striking.…”