The time course of orthographic and phonological code activation in the early phases of visual word recognition

Abstract

In a recent article, Ferrand and Grainger (1992) reported that briefly presented, forward-masked, nonword primes that share letters with a target word facilitate lexical decision performance at prime exposures of 33 msec, but no longer affect performance at 67-msec exposures. In the same experiment, nonword primes that were homophonic with targets did not affect performance relative to orthographic controls at 33-msec prime exposures, but produced facilitatory priming effects at prime exposures of 67 msec. In the present study, we extend these results, varying prime exposures from 17 msec to 100 msec. Orthographic facilitation was found with prime exposures from 17 msec to 50 msec, whereas phonological facilitation only started to emerge at exposures of 50 msec. The results demonstrate a distinct time course for the buildup of orthographic and phonological information during the processing of pronounceable strings of letters.