Phonological priming in spoken word recognition with bisyllabic targets

Abstract

Four experiments were carried out to examine phonological priming effects on bisyllabic target words. In Experiments 1a and 1b, auditorily presented monosyllabic word and pseudoword primes facilitated lexical decisions to auditorily presented bisyllabic words. This facilitation was found for primes overlapping the targets' initial syllable (e.g., "ver" [worm in French] primed "VERTIGE" [VERTIGO]) and for primes overlapping the targets' final syllable (e.g., ''tige'' [stem] primed "VERTIGE"). Experiment 2 replicated the initial-overlap effect for monosyllabic word primes using a crossmodal (auditory-visual) method; however no facilitation was observed for final-overlap nor for bisyllabic primes (e.g., "verger" [orchard] did not facilitate VERTIGE). In Experiment 3, the initial overlap facilitation effect was replicated in a naming task. These results are interpreted in terms of activation and deactivation of candidates.