Phonological and Orthographic Priming Effects in Auditory and Visual Word Recognition

Four experiments investigated the effects of orthographic and phonological similarity on word recognition latencies using either auditory or visual presentations.

All experiments exploited a priming methodology, with subjects participating in a lexical decision and a pronunciation task. In all experiments, target stimuli were preceded by primes which were related either orthographically, phonologically, or both orthographically and phonologically.

The same stimuli were used for all experiments. For the experiments in the auditory modality, both lexical decision and naming data show robust priming effects relative to unrelated controls for experimental conditions in which there was both orthographic and phonological overlap as well as for conditions in which there is only phonological similarity. In the visual modality, the orthographically related condition showed significant inhibitory effects while phonologically related conditions show no priming effects.

The data were analyzed in terms of modality of presentation, task requirements, and nature of the priming relationship. The results are interpreted in terms of the role of orthographic and auditory information in word recognition and implications for models of lexical organization.