The Use of Abstract Graphemic Information in Lexical Access

Abstract

Three experiments investigated the nature of the information required for the lexical access of visual words. A four-field masking procedure was used, in which the presentation of consecutive prime and target letter strings was preceded and followed by presentations of a pattern mask. This procedure prevented subjects from identifying, and thus intentionally using, prime information. Experiment I extablished the existence of a semantic priming effect on target identification, demonstrating the lexical access of primes under these conditions. It also showed a word repetition effect independent of letter case. Experiment I1 tested whether this repetition effect was due to the activation of graphemic or phonemic information. The graphemic and phonemic similarity of primes and targets was varied. No evidence for phonemic priming was found, although a graphemic priming effect, independent of the physical similarity of the stimuli, was obtained. Finally Experiment I11 demonstrated that, irrespective of whether the prime was a word or a nonword, graphemic priming was equally effective. In both Experiments I1 and 111, however, the word repetition effect was stronger than the graphemic priming effect. It is argued that facilitation from graphemic priming was due to the prime activating a target representation coded for abstract (non-visual) graphemic features, such as letter identities. The extra facilitation from same identity priming was attributed to semantic as well as graphemic activation. The implications of these results for models of word recognition are discussed.

Syllabic priming in lexical decision and naming tasks: The syllable congruency effect re-examined in French.

“…The prime was immediately replaced by an uppercase target item. Primes were presented in lower-case letters and targets in upper-case letters to ensure that priming effects were not due to overlap of visual features (see Evett & Humphreys, 1981). The target remained on the screen until the participants responded or 2500 ms had elapsed.…”

A study of masked form priming in picture and word naming

“…Previous experiments have demonstrated facilitatory effects of repetition (or identity) priming when a prime word is masked and unavailable for conscious report in word naming (Forster & Davis, 1991;Sereno, 1991), as well as in lexical decision (Forster & Davis, 1984;Segui & Grainger, 1990a, 1990bSereno, 1991) and perceptual identification tasks (Evett & Humphreys, 1981;Humphreys, Besner, & Quinlan, 1988;Humphreys et aI., 1982). The question to be addressed in Experiment 1 is whether these masked repetition priming effects that are observed when both primes and targets are words will also be observed when primes are words and subjects have to name picture targets.…”

“…Geoffrey Loftus, Mark Reinitz, and an anonymous reviewer provided constructive criticism of an earlier version of this article. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to L. Ferrand, Laboratoire de Psychologie Experimentale, 28 rue Serpente, 75006 Paris, France. repetition (or identity) priming when a prime word is masked and unavailable for conscious report in tasks such as lexical decision (Forster & Davis, 1984;Segui & Grainger, 1990a, 1990bSereno, 1991), speedednaming (Forster & Davis, 1991;Sereno, 1991), and perceptual identification (Evett & Humphreys, 1981;Humphreys, Besner, & Quinlan, 1988;Humphreys, Evett, & Taylor, 1982).…”

“…In the present study we were primarily interested in the highly automatized processes involved in normal word or picture naming, so it was essential to avoid any contamination by strategic andlor episodic factors. To this end, we used the masked priming technique (Evett & Humphreys, 1981;Forster & Davis, 1984).…”

The representation of newly learned words in the mental lexicon

“…Although the prime is very difficult to detect, it produces a reliable effect on the lexical decision time for the target. The earliest and most reliable effect is the masked repetition priming effect (Evett & Humphreys, 1981;Forster & Davis, 1984), namely the recognition of the target is faster when the prime and the target are the same word. For example, the recognition of word ATTITUDE could be 50ms or 60ms faster (depending on the prime duration) when it is preceded by attitude as the prime compared to a different word or nonword as the prime.…”