Repeated prime-target presentations do not eliminate repetition and phonological priming in naming digits

Abstract

In a recent article, Ferrand, Grainger and Segui (1994), using the masked priming paradigm with prime exposures brief enough to prevent prime identification, reported that the prior masked visual presentation of the same phonological word prime facilitates picture naming independently of whether the prime was the same word or a pseudohomophone. Moreover, in terms of percent facilitation, this priming effect was similar in size, suggesting that it resulted from the preactivation in memory of the phonologial representation corresponding to the picture name. In the present study, we extend these results using (1) a new set of picture stimuli such as digit numbers, (2) a small number of highly trained subjects, and (3) repeated prime-target stimuli. We replicated this phonological priming effect and its similarity in size with the repetition effect: this effect remained robust even after the subjects had become very familiar with the stimuli, suggesting that it is a highly automatized and mandatory effect.