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

Abstract

The present study investigates the origins of the masked onset priming effect (MOPE). There are two alternative interpretations that account for most of the evidence reported on the MOPE, so far. The speech planning account (SP) identifies the locus of the MOPE in the preparation of the speech response. In contrast, the dual-route theory proposes that the effect arises as a result of the processing of the prime by the nonlexical route. In a series of masked onset priming word naming experiments we test the validity of these accounts by manipulating the primes' frequency, their lexical status, and pronounceability. We found consistent MOPEs of similar magnitude with high- and low-frequency prime words as well as with pronounceable nonwords. Contrarily, when primes consisted of unpronounceable consonantal strings the effect disappeared, suggesting that pronounceability of the prime is a prerequisite for the emergence of the MOPE. These results are in accordance with the predictions of the SP account. The pattern of effects obtained in the present study further defines the origins of the MOPE.

Reading aloud in Persian: ERP evidence for an early locus of the masked onset priming effect

“…powder -CARPET). This effect has been replicated in English (Kinoshita, 2000(Kinoshita, , 2003Kinoshita & Woollams, 2002;Malouf & Kinoshita, 2007), Dutch (Schiller, 2004(Schiller, , 2007(Schiller, , 2008, French (Carreiras, Ferrand, Grainger, & Perea, 2005;Grainger & Ferrand, 1996), and Spanish (Carreiras, Perea, Vergara, & Pollatsek, 2009;Dimitropoulou, Duñabeitia, & Carreiras, 2010). There is evidence that the MOPE is due to phonological (e.g.…”

The functional phonological unit of Japanese‐English bilinguals is language dependent: Evidence from masked onset and mora priming effects

“…(). There was a 7 ms masked onset priming effect, an effect size that falls within the typical range of 5–16 ms (e.g., Dimitropoulou et al., ; Kinoshita, ; Kinoshita & Woollams, ; Schiller, ). In the Mora condition, naming latencies were also significantly faster when the targets were presented for the second than the first time ( t = −4.50, p < .001).…”

“…Therefore, it was not possible to control for word frequency across the four types of prime words. Because masked onset priming effects appear to be unaffected by stimulus frequency or lexicality (e.g., Dimitropoulou, Duñabeitia, & Carreiras, ; Kinoshita, ; Malouf & Kinoshita, ; Verdonschot et al., ), this aspect of our design should not have affected the nature of the priming effects. Lastly, all of the Japanese prime‐target pairs had the same onset syllabic structure (i.e., CV‐CV), although there is little evidence that syllabic structure is relevant to onset/mora‐priming effects with Japanese stimuli (see Verdonschot et al., , Experiment 4).…”

The locus of the masked onset priming effect

“…If, on the other hand, the MOPE relates to speech planning processes, this priming effect would have no bearing on whether grapheme-to-phoneme computation is serial or parallel in nature (Kinoshita, 2003). Instead, this effect could be used only to investigate issues related specifically to production processes, such as questions related to the functional unit(s) of production planning in a given language (e.g., Ferrand, Segui, & Grainger, 1996;Schiller, 1998Schiller, , 1999Schiller, , 2000Verdonschot et al, 2011; but see also Brand, Rey, & Peereman, 2003). As discussed above, taken together with previous work on the MOPE in Korean (Kim & Davis, 2002), the results of the present study come down relatively firmly in support of a GPC-based model of this priming effect, and specifically, of the F&D account.…”

“…These results conflict with those of Forster and Davis (1991), who argued that there should be no MOPE for highfrequency targets because lexically-based phonological form retrieval for such words can be completed before GPC-based phonological computation. Evidence for the speech planning account also comes from results indicating that there is no MOPE when related primes are unpronounceable (Dimitropoulou, Duñabeitia, & Carreiras, 2010). If only the first letter of the prime is converted to sound as the DRC account suggests, the pronounceability of this stimulus should not matter.…”