In the present study, we assessed phonological priming during a visual lexical decision task (LDT) in patients with Parkinson's disease (PD). This study was performed because phonological deficiencies have been reported in patients with PD, and such processes are critical predictors of reading performance. We tested for phonological priming effects using homonyms (zarjento-SARGENTO), where the prime differed from the target orthographically but with complete phonological overlap, and rhymes (cadera-MADERA), where the last two syllables of both the prime and the target are identical. Both types of priming were compared to the non-rhyme baseline condition (mercader-CUCHILLA) to assess the size of the priming effect. The results indicated that patients with PD exhibited a smaller phonological priming effect than controls in the homophonic condition. Patients with PD also displayed a lower percentage of correct responses and longer Reaction Times (RTs) than controls on both rhyme and homophone pairings. No group differences were found in the non-rhyme experimental condition. We concluded that phonological processing in patients with PD is important for lexical access during visual word recognition.

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Author´s contribution to this paper was as follows: BPC: assessing children, experimental design, statistical analysis of the data, writing and reviewing of manuscript; MRC: experimental design, statistical analysis, writing and reviewing manuscript, GYT: assessing children and reviewing the manuscript; JBH: experimental design and reviewing manuscript. JSP: statistical analysis, LL: assessing children;

In the present study, we assessed phonological priming during a visual lexical decision task (LDT) in patients with Parkinson's disease (PD). This study was performed because phonological deficiencies have been reported in patients with PD, and such processes are critical predictors of reading performance. We tested for phonological priming effects using homonyms (zarjento -SARGENTO), where the prime differed from the target orthographically but with complete phonological overlap, and rhymes (cadera -MADERA), where the last two syllables of both the prime and the target are identical. Both types of priming were compared to the non-rhyme baseline condition (mercader -CUCHILLA) to assess the size of the priming effect. The results indicated that patients with PD exhibited a smaller phonological priming effect than controls in the homophonic condition. Patients with PD also displayed a lower percentage of correct responses and longer Reaction Times (RTs) than controls on both rhyme and homophone pairings. No group differences were found in the non-rhyme experimental condition. We concluded that phonological processing in patients with PD is important for lexical access during visual word recognition.