Language and Cognitive Processes - Institut für Phonetik

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Downloaded By: [Universitaetsbibliothek] At: 15:27 19 June 2007 PHONOLOGICAL PRIMING 379 the auditorily presented primes ‘‘kapitaal’’ (capital) and ‘‘kapitein’’ (captain). However, when the visual target appeared at the end of the prime, only the appropriate related target was facilitated. This showed that, although both candidates had been activated in a rst stage, facilitation disappeared as soon as the sensory information favoured one of the candidates over the others. In Experiments 1a, 1b and 2, we used a lexical decision task. It could be argued that a checking mechanism for congruency between prime and target would be involved in our effects (Balota & Chumbley, 1984). Such a mechanism would be described as the tendency of the subjects to respond « yes when the pairs are phonologically related and « no when the pairs are not related. This would then lead to a decrease in response times for the related pairs of words (since the result of checking for relatedness is compatible with the word responses) and to an increase in response times for the control pairs of words (since the result is not compatible with the ‘‘yes’’ responses in that case). Let us note that if this kind of checking mechanism was involved, it should produce a facilitation effect for both kinds of overlap and not only for beginning overlap. However, to conrm that the beginning overlap facilitation effect did result from activation by the prime of the representation of the target, in Experiment 3, the partial priming conditions of Experiments 1a and 2 were re-examined with a naming task. Method EXPERIMENT 3 Participants. Thirty students participated in this experiment for course credit. They were selected according to the same criteria as in Experiment 2. Stimuli and design. The items were the same as those of Experiment 1a and 2 (partial priming). However, pseudowords were not included in this experiment. Procedure. The stimuli were presented as in Experiment 2. Instead of performing a lexical decision task on the targets, the participants were asked to pronounce each word as rapidly and as accurately as possible. The vocal response triggered a voice key connected to the computer. The target remained on the screen until a vocal response was made. Naming latencies were measured from target onset to the triggering of the voice key by the participant’s response. Occasional naming errors were collected on-line by the experimenter.
Downloaded By: [Universitaetsbibliothek] At: 15:27 19 June 2007 380 SPINELLI, SEGUI AND RADEAU Results Mean correct RTs and SDs for the targets in the different overlap conditions are given in Table 3. Mean RTs were analysed by subjects and by items with overlap conditions as main factor. The percentage of rejected values was 4%. One-way Anovas conducted on RTs revealed a main effect of overlap condition, signicant by subjects (F 1(2, 58) ˆ 7.08, p < .002), but marginally signicant by items (F 2(2, 70) ˆ 2.76, p < .068). Planned comparisons yielded a signicant facilitatory effect of beginning overlap (F 1(1, 29) ˆ 13.26, p < .001, F 2(1, 35) ˆ 4.36, p < .04) but no signicant effect of nal overlap (F 1(1, 29) ˆ 2.96, p < .92, F 2(1, 35) < 1). Analyses conducted on errors revealed no main effect of overlap (F 1(2, 58) close to 1 and F 2(2, 70) < 1). Discussion Experiment 3 was designed to provide evidence that the facilitation effect observed in the previous experiments with initial overlap did not take place at a decisional level. For that purpose, we used a naming task instead of a lexical decision task. When the subjects had to name the targets, we observed the same pattern of results found with the lexical decision task, i.e., a facilitation for beginning overlap and no effect for nal overlap. In this task, participants do not make any binary decisions since only words are presented. Thus, because we replicate the beginning overlap facilitation effect, this effect cannot be attributed to an artifact of the lexical decision task. On the contrary, we interpret the beginning overlap facilitation effect in terms of the activation of the representations of lexical candidates. GENERAL DISCUSSION The aim of the present research was to examine the processes of activation and deactivation of candidates during spoken word processing. This TABLE 3 Mean naming latencies in milliseconds (ms), standard deviation for correct responses to the targets and error rates in the three priming conditions of Experiment 3 with auditory-visual presentation Beginning Final Control Beginning priming Final priming RT (ms) 487 497 506 ‡ 19 ‡ 9 SD (62) (59) (65) Errors (%) 3 2 2
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