Masked inhibitory priming in english: evidence for lexical inhibition

Predictions derived from the interactive activation (IA) model were tested in 3 experiments using the masked priming technique in the lexical decision task. Experiment 1 showed a strong effect of prime lexicality: Classifications of target words were facilitated by orthographically related nonword primes (relative to unrelated nonword primes) but were inhibited by orthographically related word primes (relative to unrelated word primes). Experiment 2 confirmed IA's prediction that inhibitory priming effects are greater when the prime and target share a neighbor. Experiment 3 showed a minimal effect of target word neighborhood size (N) on inhibitory priming but a trend toward greater inhibition when nonword foils were high-N than when they were low-N. Simulations of 3 different versions of the IA model showed that the best fit to the data is produced when lexical inhibition is selective and when masking leads to reset of letter activities.     

A study of masked form priming in picture and word naming

We report a series of picture- and word-naming experiments in which the masked priming paradigm with prime exposures brief enough to prevent prime identification were used. Experiment 1 demonstrates that the prior presentation of the same word prime facilitates both picture and word naming independently of target frequency. In Experiments 2 and 3, primes that were pseudohomophones of picture targets produced facilitatory effects compared with orthographic controls, but these orthographically similar nonword primes did not facilitate picture naming compared with unrelated controls. On the other hand, word targets were primarily facilitated by orthographic prime— target overlap. This marked dissociation in the priming effects obtained with picture and word targets is discussed in relation to different explanations of masked form priming effects in visual word recognition and current models of picture and word naming.     

Letter-position coding in random consonant arrays

The processing of letter-position information in randomly arranged consonant strings was investigated using a masked prime variant of the alphabetic decision (letter/nonletter classification) task. In Experiment 1, primes were uppercase consonant trigrams (e.g., FMH) and targets were two uppercase Xs accompanied by the target letter or a nonletter (e.g., XMX, X%X). Response times were systematically faster when target letters were present in the prime string than when target letters were not present in the prime string. These constituent letter-priming effects were significantly stronger when the target letter appeared in the same position in the prime and target stimuli. This contrast between position-specific and position-independent priming was accentuated when subjects responded only when all the characters in the target string were letters (multiple alphabetic decision) in Experiments 2 and 3. In Experiment 4, when prime exposure duration was varied, it was found that position-specific priming develops earlier than position-independent priming. Finally, Experiment 5 ruled out a perceptual-matching interpretation of these results. An interpretation is offered in terms of position-specific and position-independent letter-detector units in an interactiveactivation framework.     

Does<Emphasis Type="SmallCaps">LGHT</Emphasis> prime<Emphasis Type="SmallCaps">DARK</Emphasis>? Masked associative priming with addition neighbors

We present two masked priming lexical decision experiments in which we examined whether a nonword prime word would activate associative/semantic information from its corresponding addition neighbor (e.g.,lght-DARK via the addition neighborlight), producing associative/semantic priming. The rationale was the following: If a nonword prime with a missing letter produced a semantic/associative priming effect, this would clearly indicate that this nonword was activating the lexical/semantic representations of its base word, thereby reinforcing the models of visual-word recognition in which the orthographic representations produced bylght (orligt) andlight are quite similar (e.g., SOLAR, SERIOL, open-bigram, and overlap models). The results showed that the magnitude of the masked associative priming effect with subset primes was remarkably similar to that of the priming effect with the corresponding word prime. Furthermore, the magnitude of the associative priming effect was similar when the deleted letter was a vowel and when the deleted letter was a consonant.     

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

The masked onset priming effect (MOPE) refers to the empirical finding that target naming is faster when the target (SIB) is preceded by a briefly presented masked prime that starts with the same letter/phoneme (suf) than when it does not (mof; Kinoshita, 2000, Experiment 1). The dual-route cascaded (DRC) computational model of reading (Coltheart, Rastle, Perry, Langdon, & Ziegler, 2001) has offered an explanation for how the MOPE might occur in humans. However, there has been some empirical discrepancy regarding whether for nonword items the effect is limited to the first-letter/phoneme overlap between primes and targets or whether orthographic/phonological priming effects occur beyond the first letter/phoneme. Experiment 1 tested these two possibilities. The human results, which were successfully simulated by the DRC model, showed priming beyond the first letter/phoneme. Nevertheless, two recent versions of the DRC model made different predictions regarding the nature of these priming effects. Experiment 2 examined whether it is facilitatory, inhibitory, or both, in order to adjudicate between the two versions of the model. The human results showed that primes exert both facilitatory and inhibitory effects.     

Prelexical facilitation and lexical interference in auditory word recognition.

Phonological priming effects were examined in an auditory single-word shadowing task. In 6 experiments, target items were preceded by auditorily or visually presented, phonologically similar, word or nonword primes. Results revealed facilitation in response time when a target was preceded by a word or nonword prime having the same initial phoneme when the prime was auditorily presented but not when it was visually presented. Second, modality-independent interference was observed when the phonological overlap between the prime and target increased from 1 to 3 phonemes for word primes but not for nonword primes. Taken together, these studies suggest that phonological information facilitates word recognition as a result of excitation at a prelexical level and increases response time as a result of competition at a lexical level. These processes are best characterized by connectionist models of word recognition.     

Associative priming effects with visible, transposed-letter nonwords: JUGDE facilitates COURT

Associative priming effects can be obtained with masked nonword primes or with masked pseudohomophone primes (e.g., judpe?CCOURT, tode?CFROG), but not with visible primes. The usual explanation is that when the prime is visible, these stimuli no longer activate the semantic representations of their base words. Given the important role of transposed-letter stimuli (e.g., jugde) in visual word recognition, here we examined whether or not an associative priming effect could be obtained with visible transposed-letter nonword primes (e.g., jugde?CCOURT) in a series of lexical decision experiments. Results showed a sizable associative priming effect with visible transposed-letter nonword primes (i.e., jugde?CCOURT faster than neevr?CCOURT) in Experiments 1?C3 that was close to that with word primes. In contrast, we failed to find a parallel effect with replacement-letter nonword primes (Experiment 2). These findings pose some constraints to models of visual word recognition.     

Fast priming during eye fixations in reading.

Near-threshold primes were "flashed" in a target location prior to the onset of a target word while Ss read. The type and duration of the prime were manipulated. In Exp. 1, identical, related, and unrelated primes were presented for 60, 45, or 30 ms from onset of an eye fixation. The prime was then replaced with the target word, which remained in place while Ss finished reading the sentence. Fixation time on the target word was measured. Exp. 2 replicated Exp. 1, with two exceptions: A random letter string replaced the identical prime condition, and prime durations of 39, 30, or 21 ms were used. In both experiments, significant priming effects (related vs. unrelated) were obtained when the prime was presented for 30 ms. Results are discussed with regard to subliminal priming effects. Applications to the study of word recognition processes are also discussed.     

Transposed-Letter Priming Across Inflectional Morpheme Boundaries

This study reports findings from two experiments testing whether a transposed-letter (TL) priming effect can be obtained when the transposition occurs across morphological boundaries. Previous studies have primarily tested derivationally complex words or compound words, but have not examined a more rule-based and productive morphological structure, i.e., inflectionally complex words, using masked priming. Experiment 1 tested TL priming with nonword primes and inflected targets (FOCUSING). Nonword primes were formed by transposing letters either within the root morpheme (fcousing) or across two morphemes (focuisng). Experiment 2 used the same nonword primes, but had the root words as targets (FOCUS). Both experiments showed similar TL priming effects for within-morpheme and across-boundary positions, indicating that morphological decomposition takes place only after letter positions in a word have been assigned. This finding provides additional evidence to previous research testing derived and compound words showing TL priming regardless of the position of transposition.     

Are letter codes always activated?

This investigation assesses whether a word’s constituent-letter codes are activated when whole-word processing is encouraged, as well as when letter processing is encouraged. In Experiments 1 and 2, word primes were followed by a target item that had to be named. The target was a word, a constituent letter that had appeared in the prime, or a nonconstituent letter that had not appeared in the prime. The measure of constituent-letter activation was the difference in letter-naming latency between constituent and nonconstituent letters. Presumably, if constituent letters are named faster, letters are being activated by the words in which they appear. To encourage either whole-word or letter analysis during the processing of the priming word, the proportion of word versus letter targets was systematically varied. When the proportion heavily favored letter targets, constituent letters were named faster than their nonconstituent controls. However, a constituent-letter (vs. a nonconstituent-letter) advantage was not obtained when the proportion favored word targets. Experiment 3 replicated the effect with a priming task that required a discrimination response, instead of a naming response. Thus the results suggested that the activation of constituent-letter codes need not take place during the processing of words, but occurs only when letter analysis is stressed by the task.     

List context effects on masked phonological priming in the lexical decision task

A lexical decision experiment tested the effects of briefly presented masked primes that were homophones or pseudohomophones of target words. Different types of nonword foil (pseudohomophones, orthographically regular nonwords, orthographically irregular nonwords) were mixed with the word targets. Pseudohomophone priming effects were independent of nonword foil variations, whereas homophone priming effects varied from being facilitatory in the presence of orthographically regular nonwords, inhibitory in the presence of pseudohomophones, and null in the presence of irregular nonwords. This dissociation in the way nonword foil variations influence masked pseudohomophone and homophone priming effects in the lexical decision task is discussed within the framework of a bimodal extension of the multiple readout model of visual word recognition (Grainger & Jacobs, 1996).     

Associative and repetition priming with the repeated masked prime technique: No priming found

Wentura and Frings (2005) reported evidence of subliminal categorical priming on a lexical decision task, using a new method of visual masking in which the prime string consisted of the prime word flanked by random consonants and random letter masks alternated with the prime string on successive refresh cycles. We investigated associative and repetition priming on lexical decision, using the same method of visual masking. Three experiments failed to show any evidence of associative priming, (1) when the prime string was fixed at 10 characters (three to six flanking letters) and (2) when the number of flanking letters were reduced or absent. In all cases, prime detection was at chance level. Strong associative priming was observed with visible unmasked primes, but the addition of flanking letters restricted priming even though prime detection was still high. With repetition priming, no priming effects were found with the repeated masked technique, and prime detection was poor but just above chance levels. We conclude that with repeated masked primes, there is effective visual masking but that associative priming and repetition priming do not occur with experiment-unique prime-target pairs. Explanations for this apparent discrepancy across priming paradigms are discussed. The priming stimuli and prime-target pairs used in this study may be downloaded as supplemental materials from mc.psychonomicjournals. org/content/supplemental.     

Activation of phonological codes during eye fixations in reading.

Two experiments addressed the issue of whether phonological codes are activated early in a fixation during reading using the fast-priming technique (S. C. Sereno & K. Rayner, 1992). Participants read sentences and, at the beginning of the initial fixation in a target location, a priming letter string was displayed, followed by the target word. Phonological priming was assessed by the difference in the gaze duration on the target word between when the prime was a homophone and when it was a control word equated with the homophone on orthographic similarity to the target. Both experiments demonstrated homophonic priming with prime durations of about 35 ms, but only for high-frequency word primes, indicating that lexicality was guiding the speed of the extraction of phonological codes early in a fixation. Evidence was also obtained for orthographic priming, and the data suggest that orthographic and phonological priming effects interact in a mutually facilitating manner.     

Masked priming of words and nonwords in a naming task: Further evidence for a nonlexical basis for priming

Masked priming effects in word identification tasks such as lexical decision and word naming have been attributed to a lexical mechanism whereby the masked prime opens a lexical entry corresponding to the target word. Two experiments are reported in which masked repetition priming effects of similar magnitude were obtained with word and nonword targets in a naming task. Masked orthographic priming was more stable for word than for nonword targets, although morphological primes produced no advantage beyond that achieved by matched orthographic primes. These results, taken together with the recent finding that repetition priming of nonwords can be obtained in the lexical decision task, support the view that masked priming of words and nonwords has a nonlexical component. We suggest that masked primes can enhance target identification by contributing to the construction of an orthographic or a phonological representation of the target, regardless of the target's lexical status.     

On obtaining episodic priming in a lexical decision task following paired-associate learning

In four experiments, subjects made lexical (word-nonword) decisions to target letter strings after studying paired associates. In this lexical decision test, word targets previously studied as response terms in the paired associates were preceded at a 150-ms and/or 950-ms stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) by one of various subsets of the following six types of primes: a neutral (XXX or ready) prime, a semantically unrelated word prime episodically related to the target through its having been previously studied in the same pair, a semantically related word prime previously studied in a pair with some other unrelated word, a semantically unrelated word prime previously studied in a pair with some other unrelated word, a nonstudied semantically related word prime, and a nonstudied semantically unrelated word prime. At the 950-ms SOA, facilitation of lexical decisions produced by the episodically related primes was greater in test lists in which there were no 150-ms SOA trials intermixed, no previously studied semantically related primes, and no studied nonword targets. At the 150-ms SOA, facilitation from episodic priming was greater in test lists in which there were no semantically related primes and all studied word targets and no studied nonword targets. Facilitation effects from semantically related primes were small in magnitude and occurred inconsistently. Discussion focused on the implications these results have for the episodic-semantic memory distinction and the automaticity of episodic and semantic priming effects.     

Masked repetition and phonological priming in picture naming

We report a series of picture naming experiments in which target pictures were primed by briefly presented masked words. Experiment 1 demonstrates that the prior presentation of the same word prime (e.g.,rose-rose) facilitates picture naming independently of the target’s name frequency. In Experiment 2, primes that were homophones of picture targets (e.g.,rows-rose) also produced facilitatory effects compared with unrelated controls, but priming was significantly larger for targets with low-frequency names relative to targets with high-frequency names. In Experiment 3, primes that were higher frequency homophones of picture targets produced facilitatory effects compared with identical primes. These results are discussed in relation to different accounts of the effects of masked priming in current models of picture naming.     

Automatic letter priming in an alphabetic decision task

An alphabetic decision task was used to study effects of form priming on letter recognition at very short prime durations (20 to 80 msec). The task required subjects to decide whether a stimulus was a letter or a nonletter. Experiment 1 showed clear facilitatory effects of primes being either physically or nominally identical to the targets, with a stable advantage for the former. Experiment 2 demonstrated that uppercase letters are classified more rapidly as letters (vs. non-letters) when they are preceded by a briefly exposed, forward- and backward-masked, visually similar uppercase letter than when they are preceded by a visually dissimilar uppercase letter. Finally, Experiment 3 demonstrated that nominally identical and visually similar primes facilitate processing more than do nominally identical, visually dissimilar primes. The alphabetic decision task proved to produce sensitive and stable priming effects at the feature, letter, and response-choice level. The present results on letter-letter priming thus constitute a solid data base against which to evaluate other priming effects, such as word-letter priming. The results are discussed in light of current activation models of letter and word recognition and are compared with data simulated by the interactive activation model (McClelland & Rumelhart, 1981).     

Automatic phonological priming in visual word recognition

Theories of visual word recognition have proposed that a word’s phonological properties can be involved in reading visually presented words. Further, it is commonly supposed that this phonological information can be arrived at in at least two ways: (1) by looking it up after identifying the word visually (a lexical route) or (2) by rule-governed translating of the word’s orthographic code (a nonlexical route), Four experiments were conducted to examine whether phonological information is automatically accessed in visual word recognition, and, if so, how this occurs. A priming technique was used with a display sequence of mask, prime, target, mask. Subjects were asked to make written responses to any words that they thought were present, and prime identification was minimal. A facilitatory effect of phonological priming on target identification occurred when primes were homophones of targets. However, no similar facilitation occurred when the prime was a nonword homophone of the target. Further, the homophone priming effect was found irrespective of whether targets followed the spelling-to-sound rules of English. The results suggest that automatic access to phonology can occur in visual word recognition and that it operates by means of a lexical route.     

Hierarchical control and skilled typing: evidence for word-level control over the execution of individual keystrokes

Routine actions are commonly assumed to be controlled by hierarchically organized processes and representations. In the domain of typing theories, word-level information is assumed to activate the constituent keystrokes required to type each letter in a word. We tested this assumption directly using a novel single-letter probe technique. Subjects were primed with a visual or auditory word or a visually presented random consonant string and then probed to type a single letter from the prime or another randomly selected letter. Relative to randomly selected letters, probe responses were speeded for first, middle, and last letters contained in visual and auditory word primes but not for middle and last letters contained in random consonant primes. This suggests that word-level information causes parallel activation of constituent keystrokes, consistent with hierarchical processing. The role of hierarchical processing in typing and routine action is discussed.     

Identity primes produce facilitation in a colour naming task

Five experiments examined associative or identity priming effects in a colour-naming task with colour-neutral words. In Experiment 1, subjects instructed to read the prime silently showed no associative priming effect but a colour-naming facilitation with identity priming. In Experiment 2, the typical associative priming interference in colour naming was demonstrated in subjects recalling the prime word, but not in subjects reading the prime silently, whereas associative primes facilitated word naming regardless of the prime response requirement. The remaining studies investigated the colour-naming facilitation observed with identity primes. Experiment 3 showed no effects on the facilitation of colour naming from varying the letter case of a silently read prime. Experiment 4 showed facilitation when subjects recalled the prime, and a target frequency effect, with faster colour-naming latencies for high- and medium- than low-frequency targets. In Experiment 5, there was no facilitation for naming the colour of target words paired with non-word primes differing in their initial letter from the target. Taken together, the results suggest that the facilitation of colour naming following identical primes reflects faster target word recognition, whereas the associative priming interference reflects an attentional effect.