Form-priming effects in nonword naming

Abstract

Form-priming effects from sublexical (syllabic or segmental) primes in masked priming can be accounted for in two ways. One is the sublexical pre-activation view according to which segments are pre-activated by the prime, and at the time the form-related target is to be produced, retrieval/assembly of those pre-activated segments is faster compared to an unrelated situation. However, it has also been argued that form-priming effects from sublexical primes might be due to lexical pre-activation. When the sublexical prime is presented, it activates all form-related words (i.e., cohorts) in the lexicon, necessarily including the form-related target, which-as a consequence-is produced faster than in the unrelated case. Note, however, that this lexical pre-activation account makes previous pre-lexical activation of segments necessary. This study reports a nonword naming experiment to investigate whether or not sublexical pre-activation is involved in masked form priming with sublexical primes. The results demonstrated a priming effect suggesting a nonlexical effect. However, this does not exclude an additional lexical component in form priming.

Can the dual-route cascaded computational model of reading offer a valid account of the masked onset priming effect?

“…(more experimental stimuli and trials in each of the three experimental conditions, repeated measures design), or the increased accuracy in reaction time measuring that is achieved by hand marking our participants' naming responses. Most importantly, our finding was consistent with the findings from the other two studies mentioned above, which also found that for nonword prime-target pairs there is priming beyond the first letter/ phoneme (Horemans & Schiller, 2004;Masson & Isaak, 1999).…”

“…The results revealed a masked orthographic priming effect-that is, NUMP preceded by nurp was named faster than NUMP preceded by nalk, indicating that more letters of the prime than the first have an influence on the target. 4 In the Horemans and Schiller (2004) study, nonword target items (e.g., KATROEN) were preceded by five types of prime: first-syllable (e.g., %%ka%%%%%%), first-segment (e.g., %%k%%%%%%%), first-segment plus second-syllable (e.g., %%k%troen%), second-syllable (e.g., %%%%troen%), and control (e.g., %%%%%%%%%%) primes, which were presented for 50 ms. The results showed small priming effects both in the first-segment condition and in the second-syllable condition in comparison with the control condition.…”

Trial by trial: selecting first or second language phonology of a visually masked word

“…This is in line with previous literature, where significant priming effects have been reported when both orthography and phonology overlap during reading aloud (e.g. Forster & Davis, 1991;Horemans & Schiller, 2004) and during visual word recognition (e.g. Carreiras et al, 2009).…”

Influence of prime lexicality, frequency, and pronounceability on the masked onset priming effect

“…Importantly, the authors further extended this finding by manipulating the prime's onset complexity (e.g., brev -BILN and drum -DISC; but see Kinoshita, 2000, Experiment 2). These results are in accordance with the account of the MOPE offered by the dual-route theory, which proposes that under masked priming conditions only the initial letter/phoneme of the prime gets processed by the nonlexical route (e.g., Coltheart et al, 2001; but see Andrews, 1996;Carreiras et al, 2005;Horemans & Schiller, 2004;Masson & Isaak, 1999;Schiller, 1998, for evidence of effective processing beyond the prime's first letter). 1 Hence, the dual-route theory predicts that as long as the initial letter/phoneme is common between prime and target, a MOPE should appear irrespectively of the following graphemes/phonemes of the letter string.…”