Implicit memory for phonological processes in visual stem completion

Abstract

Four experiments were conducted investigating the role of phonology in repetition priming. Experiment I used a cross-modal priming paradigm in which participants made semantic judgments about spoken words and then performed a visual stem completion task. In Experiments 2-4, both the primes and the test stems were presented visually. The results of the first three experiments revealed that priming transfers across interpretations of a homophone. That is, seeing or hearing week primes both week and weak. The results of Experiment 4 showed that homophone priming cannot be attributed to the orthographic similarity of homophonic words. Together, these results indicate that repetition priming on a visual word completion task includes a phonological component.Although the identification of a written word may appear to be a relatively simple act, it is in fact a rather remarkable accomplishment. Indeed, research by several generations of psychologists has revealed that visual word identification reflects the interplay of a variety of psychological processes (see review by Henderson, 1982). For example,a varietyoffindings (reviewedbelow) indicate that phonological processes play an early and influential role in the identification process. Similarly, a substantial body of evidence shows that word identification is influenced (often in rather subtle ways) by the memory of recent processing episodes.The question we address here involves the relationship between these two aspects ofthe word identification process. Are the phonological processes that support visual word identification facilitated by repetition priming manipulations, or do repetition priming effects occur only at some other level of processing? Put another way, the issue we address is whether the effect of implicit memory on visual word identification includes a phonological component.To preview what follows, the results of the experiments reported below show that repetition priming facilitates the phonological processes involved in reading. These results demonstrate that priming transfers across interpretations of a homophone. That is, seeing or hearing week primes both week and weak in a visual stem completion task. Because homophones are pronounced This research was supported by Grant HD-O1994 from the National Institute of Child Health and Development to Haskins Laboratories, Correspondence should be addressed to 1. G. Rueckl, Department of Psychology, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT 06269 (e-mail: rueckl@psych.psy.uconn.edu).identically but differ in both spelling and meaning, the transfer of priming between homophones strongly suggests that visual repetition priming includes a phonological component. Phonological Effects in VISual Word IdentificationThe role ofphonological processes in visual word identification has been the topic of much debate (see Carr & Pollatsek, 1985, Humphreys & Evett, 1985, and Van Orden, Pennington, & Stone, 1990, for reviews). Although it was once widely held that phonological processes contribute relatively little to the...

Interactive Visual and Postvisual Processes and Their Roles in Form-Specific Memory.

“…Previous studies implicate storage of visual information (Graf, Shimamura, & Squire, 1985;Marsolek et al, 1992), conceptual or semantic information (Bassili, Smith, & MacLeod, 1989;Blaxton et al, 1996;Keane, Gabrieli, Fennema, Growdon, & Corkin, 1991), and phonological information Rueckl & Mathew, 1999;. A new finding in the present study is that priming in stem completion can be influenced by interactive Figure 3.…”

Equivalent inter- and intramodality long-term priming: Evidence for a common lexicon for words seen and words heard

“…Other experiments point to the same conclusion (e.g., Brooks et al, 1999;Rueckl & Mathew, 1999). Of significance to this suggested revision-and of relevance to identifying the phonology in question-are observations that phonetic length affects visual lexical decision.…”

Search and selection processes in implicit and explicit word-stem completion performance in young, middle-aged, and older adults

“…Individuals adopt a strategy of pronouncing the stem internally and then search for items in the lexicon that begin with a similar sound. A recent study by Rueckl and Mathew (1999) highlights the importance of phonology for WSC priming by demonstrating that target words can be primed by their homophone (e.g., week primes the stem WEA__ for the target weak). We extend this notion by proposing that the way a participant pronounces a stem cue will be an important determinant of the choice of a completion and will influence the probability that a particular target is primed or recalled.…”