STEP: Visual Lexical Access is Initially Phonolgical: 2 [35254]

This article applies to:
E-Prime 3.0
E-Prime 1.0

 
Detail
Experiment Author: Susan Campbell. Adapted from STEP and used with permission of Brian MacWhinney
 
Experiment Description

In this task, participants were given a prime, followed by a target word that they were supposed to name. The primes were either homophones, pseudohomophones (nonwords that look like they should be pronounced like the target), or graphemic controls (words that looked like the target, but were not pronounced like it).

 

The homophones and pseudohomophones speeded naming the word, while graphemic controls seemed about as effective as normal (unrelated) controls. This implies that initial access to words is phonological, rather than graphemic.
 
Experiment Instructions

A line of hashtags "#####" appears followed by a priming word that appears for 30 milliseconds. The prime disappears and a target word appears. Participants say the target word out loud and press any key to move on to the next trial. There are 60 trials in the experiment.

 

NOTE: no .es3 version of this task is included due to compatibility issues with Windows 8 and 10. For more information, please see INFO: Windows 8 or DirectX 11 or greater detected [23888] and BUG: ClearAfter no longer working [30303].

Experiment Citation

Lukatela, G. and Turvey, M. T. (1994). Visual lexical access is initially phonological: 2. Evidence from phonological priming by homophones and pseudohomophones. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 123(4), 331-353.

 
Cited Experiment Abstract

Seven experiments were conducted that examined phonological and orthographic priming of naming using three- and four-field masking procedures with prolonged targets. Experiments 1-3 found significant phonological priming by homophones (TOWED-toad) that was independent of prime identifiability and prime-target stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA: 30, 60, or 250ms). Subsequent experiments found significant phonological priming by pseudohomophones (TODE-toad) that was similarly independent of prime identifiability and SOA. Collectively, the limited effects of orthographic control primes (TOLD-toad, TODS-toad) and the pronounced and orthographically independent effects of phonological primes suggest (a) a leading role in visual word perception for a fast-acting, automatic, assembled phonology, and (b) a phonological basis, rather than an abstract graphemic basis, for the processing equivalency of letter variations.
 
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See Also:

STEP: Visual Lexical Analysis is Initially Phonological: 1 [35236]

STEP: Automatic (prelexical) Phonetic Activation in Silent Word Reading [35354]