Masked Syllable Priming of English Nouns

Abstract

This study investigates the role of sublexical units in the phonological encoding of English single-word production in a word-naming task (Experiment 1) and a picture-naming task (Experiment 2). Targets corresponded to bisyllabic English nouns with word-initial stress which varied on the structure of their first syllable: CV (e.g., pi.lot), CVC (e.g., pic.nic), or CV[C] (e.g., pi[ll]ow).11C stands for consonant, V for vowel; syllable boundaries are marked by dots, ambisyllabic consonants appear between square brackets. Targets were preceded by a visually masked prime that either matched their first syllable (e.g., pi%%% − pi.lot) or that was one segment longer (e.g., pil%% − pi.lot) or shorter (e.g., pi%%%% − pic.nic) than the first syllable. Response times were compared to a neutral control condition (e.g., %&$%% − pi.lot) to measure the priming effects (either facilitation or inhibition). Results showed significant facilitation for both the CV and the CVC conditions. However, contrary to previous findings, there was no interaction between the syllabic structure of the prime and the target.