Locus of semantic priming effects in speeded naming

Abstract

The locus of semantic priming effects was examined by measuring onset and rime durations as well as response latencies of words with consistent and inconsistent pronunciations, using the postvocalic naming task. We found that the effect of a semantic prime on naming duration was localized rather than spread across the entire word; onset durations were shorter in the related condition than in the unrelated condition, but rime durations were equal in the two prime conditions. Moreover, the priming effect on onset durations was larger for words with inconsistent than for those with consistent pronunciations. These duration results cannot be accounted for by previous proposals, but they can be accounted for by models in which phonemes are activated in parallel rather than serially from left to right and in which motor programs are based on phonemes rather than syllables. Contrary to previous reports of an interaction of prime and regularity (a factor closely related to consistency) on naming latency, we found no interaction of prime and consistency on response latency. We argue that this conflict is only apparent and arises because naming latency conflates response latency and initial phoneme duration for some targets.