How a PINT can hurt you now but help you later: The time course of priming for word body neighbors

Journal of Memory and Language 53 (2005) 315–341

Journal of Memory and Language www.elsevier.com/locate/jml

How a PINT can hurt you now but help you later: The time course of priming for word body neighbors Penny M. Pexman *, Jennifer L. Trew, Gregory G. Holyk Department of Psychology, University of Calgary, 2500 University Drive NW, Calgary, Alta., Canada T2N 1N4 Received 22 April 2005; revision received 16 June 2005 Available online 10 August 2005

Abstract The process of naming an exception word prime (e.g., PINT) delays subsequent naming of a nonrhyming regularinconsistent word body neighbor target (e.g., TINT). Both an activation account (Taraban & McClelland, 1987) and a learning account (Burt & Humphreys, 1993) have been offered to explain this interference effect. We investigated how long these effects last in naming tasks, using prime-target intervals ranging from 3 to 51 s. We also explored whether such effects are longer lasting in more difficult phonological lexical decision tasks (PLDT, does it sound like a word?). The results showed that phonologically based interference effects were present only at relatively short (3–5 s) prime-target intervals in naming tasks but that the same items produced longer term facilitation effects in PLDT. We invoke both activation and memory mechanisms to explain the full pattern of results. Ó 2005 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Keywords: Spelling-sound consistency; Phonological coding; Word naming; Phonological lexical decision task; Delayed priming

Skilled visual word recognition involves a number of component processes, including semantic, morphological, and phonological coding. As one means of studying the phonological coding process, or the process of translating print into sound, researchers have examined the priming effects that result when people are asked to pronounce pairs of words that are rhyming or nonrhyming word body neighbors. A wordÕs body neighborhood is comprised of all words that share its orthographic body, regardless of pronunciation. In English, some words are said to be spelling-sound consistent, in that each word that shares the wordÕs body also shares its pronunciation (e.g., GATE is pronounced like its body neighbors LATE, MATE). Other words are said to be spelling-

*

Corresponding author. Fax: +1 403 282 8249. E-mail address: [email protected] (P.M. Pexman).

sound inconsistent, in that words that share the wordÕs body do not all share its pronunciation (e.g., PINT vs. TINT, MINT). Exception words like PINT are atypical in that they are not pronounced like their regular-inconsistent body neighbors (TINT, MINT). The words PINT and TINT are nonrhyming word body neighbors: they have a common orthographic pattern but the body Ô-intÕ in PINT is associated with phonological information different from the body Ô-intÕ in TINT. The words TINT and MINT, in contrast, are rhyming word body neighbors: the word body is associated with the same phonological information in both cases. In several previous studies researchers have capitalized on these characteristics of English, using these word body neighbors as primes and targets to examine the dynamics of orthographic and phonological processing in visual word recognition. For instance, Taraban and McClelland (1987) compared naming of target words preceded by either formally

0749-596X/$ - see front matter Ó 2005 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.jml.2005.06.001

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similar exception word primes (e.g., PINT–TINT) or by consistent control word primes (e.g., TAPS–TINT). Target naming latencies were significantly delayed when people first named exception word primes, compared to the condition where consistent control word primes were named. Taraban and McClelland argued that this phonological interference effect was best explained by a conspiracy model. This was a version of the interactive activation model (e.g., Rumelhart & McClelland, 1982), involving a letter level, word level, and phonological level, with competitive inhibition at each level and feedforward activation between levels. According to the conspiracy model, when an exception word like PINT is read, the orthographic and phonological representation for PINT is activated. So too are the representations for words that are orthographically similar (e.g., body neighbors) to PINT. Through competitive processes in the model, the representations for PINT eventually receive more activation than those for its body neighbors. When the target word TINT is then named, there is still residual activation in the system for PINT and its phonological features. Consequently, it is more difficult to activate the pronunciation for TINT than it would have been if an unrelated consistent word (e.g., TAPS) had been named first. In a subsequent study, Burt and Humphreys (1993) showed that phonological interference effects could be produced at a considerable delay and argued that the activation-based conspiracy model could not account for such results. That is, Burt and Humphreys presented exception word primes and regular-inconsistent target words (e.g., PINT–TINT) on adjacent trials in a naming task or else separated by 9 intervening trials (approximately a 30-s delay). Naming latencies for these regular-inconsistent targets were significantly slower following exception primes than following consistent primes (e.g., TAPS–TINT) in both the immediate and delayed priming conditions (see also Seidenberg, Waters, Barnes, & Tanenhaus, 1984). Burt and Humphreys suggested that these results were best accounted for within a connectionist (PDP) model like that of Seidenberg and McClelland (1989), albeit with slight modification. Phonological coding in such a model is achieved via the mappings between orthographic and phonological units. Seidenberg and McClelland found, in their own simulations with the PDP model, that a single presentation of an exception word prime caused negligible changes in weights and so could not influence processing of a subsequent regular-inconsistent word target. Burt and Humphreys argued that in order to explain their results it would have to be assumed that these weight changes are more substantial than Seidenberg and McClelland proposed and also last long enough to support even delayed phonological interference effects. In fact, Bowers, Damian, and Havelka (2002) have since shown that the Seidenberg and McClelland model can produce weight changes (indexed by orthographic error scores)

substantial enough to support delayed priming from word body neighbors. In this way, such effects can be attributed to a learning mechanism. Activation-based accounts, in contrast, would predict shorter-term effects. For instance, Taraban and McClelland (1987) attributed their phonological interference effects to activation in the conspiracy model, and primes and targets in their experiment were separated by approximately 3 s. Presumably, activation could not account for effects that last much longer than this, but Taraban and McClelland made no explicit claims about the duration of activation in the model. Activation is traditionally considered to be a very brief phenomenon. For instance, semantic activation is not assumed to last longer than about 2 s (e.g., Neely, 1991). It might be possible to assume that activation lasts long enough to produce interference when people name a related target after a prime-target delay of a few seconds, but it could not last long enough to explain Burt and HumphreysÕ (1993) results. Also, by the activation account, priming effects should not survive presentation of intervening unrelated items between primes and targets, since the processing of an intervening item should invoke a new pattern of activation in orthographic and phonological units. This would wipe out any residual activation for the primeÕs orthographic and phonological features, which is proposed to be the source of phonological interference effects. A limitation in the control prime conditions used by both Taraban and McClelland (1987) and Burt and Humphreys (1993) makes it difficult to accurately infer the source of the effects they observed. Both of these previous studies used a consistent word as the unrelated or control prime (e.g., TAPS–TINT) for comparison to the condition where an exception word was presented as the related prime (e.g., PINT–TINT). Pexman, Cristi, and Lupker (1999) pointed out that technically the unrelated condition for related pairs like PINT–TINT should involve exception words as primes, and that these unrelated exception word primes should have no orthographic overlap with the targets, as in BOWL–TINT. This is important because, for instance, exception words typically take longer to name and produce more errors than do consistent words (e.g., Jared, 1997a) and by comparing performance for TAPS–TINT to PINT–TINT, as Taraban and McClelland and Burt and Humphreys did, one could just be measuring the effect of naming an easy as compared to a difficult word on the previous trial.1 1

This cannot be the only explanation for Burt and Humphreys (1993) findings, as they also observed phonological interference effects for regular-inconsistent word primes and exception word targets (TINT–PINT). Since regular-inconsistent words are not as hard to name as exception words, the sequence effects would presumably be less relevant for these pairs.

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Indeed, there is evidence that naming latencies can be influenced by trial-by-trial sequence effects: Taylor and Lupker (2001) reported that words were named more slowly when preceded by a relatively hard-to-name stimulus than when preceded by a relatively easy-to-name stimulus. Pexman et al. (1999) used the more appropriate control prime condition and replicated the phonological interference effect on target naming, using primes and targets separated by slightly longer than 1 s. That is, Pexman et al. found interference for PINT–TINT pairs relative to unrelated pairs (BOWL–TINT). In both cases the primes were exception words and the targets were regular-inconsistent words. Pexman et al. also investigated whether the prime needed to be pronounced in order to produce phonological interference effects. Their results showed that phonological interference effects could be observed even when the prime was simply read silently. When the primes were named aloud, the interference effect was significantly larger. Since the interference effects were observed even when primes were not named aloud, Pexman et al. concluded that the phonological interference effect is not simply an output or articulatory phenomenon. Instead, it depends, at least in part, on the overlapping spelling-to-sound conversion processes for primes and targets. In a related study, Bowers et al. (2002) used a paradigm other than naming. In a study phase, participants in the Bowers et al. experiment were asked to read aloud 21 words. Participants were then immediately given a lexical decision task (test phase), involving 28 words and 28 pseudowords (e.g., BRATE). No estimate was given of the time elapsed between study and test for the average stimulus, but presumably it was on the order of a few minutes. Seven of the words presented in the LDT had also been presented in the study phase, and so these stimuli assessed repetition priming. Another seven of the words in the LDT were rhymes of words presented in the study phase (e.g., WOOD was presented at study and HOOD was presented in the LDT) and so these stimuli assessed rhyme priming. A further seven of the words in the LDT were nonrhyming word body neighbors of words presented in the study phase (e.g., PINT was presented at study and HINT was presented in the LDT) and so these stimuli assessed interference effects from exception word primes. The final seven words presented in the LDT had not been presented during the study phase and so provided a baseline against which Bowers et al. assessed priming effects. Results showed significant facilitory repetition priming and significant facilitory rhyme priming. There was no evidence of priming for nonrhyming word body neighbors in the latency data, and there was a trend toward inhibitory priming for nonrhyming word body neighbors in the error data. Bowers et al. argued that their results could be explained in terms of weight changes in the Seidenberg

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and McClelland (1989) model. As mentioned, Bowers et al. provided simulation results with the Seidenberg and McClelland model showing that a single encounter with a rhyming or nonrhyming word body neighbor prime could affect the orthographic error score produced by a subsequent encounter with the target word. In simulation, a rhyming word body neighbor prime produced a small amount of facilitation for the target word, while a nonrhyming word body neighbor prime produced a small amount of interference for the target word. This happened because, as a result of processing the prime, orthographic-phonological correspondences in the model were altered. These alterations affected the organization of the orthographic system (orthographic input units and hidden units) and hence influenced orthographic error scores produced for the target words. The weight changes in the Seidenberg and McClelland model, since they reflected learning, were expected to be long term. Thus, if priming effects for rhyming and nonrhyming word body neighbors are attributed to these weight changes, the effects should be observed even at substantial delays between primes and targets. Another factor that might be important to the duration of these effects is the nature of the task used to assess them. Word naming is a relatively fast and easy task, and so it is possible that one might observe longer lasting priming effects with a task that was somehow more sensitive to the effects. There are only a few studies on word body priming effects in tasks other than naming. For instance, Meyer, Schvaneveldt, and Ruddy (1974) examined priming effects for word body neighbors in the lexical decision task, but only examined performance in an immediate priming condition; that is, there were no intervening items presented between primes and targets. Under these conditions, Meyer et al. reported facilitory priming effects for rhyming word body neighbors (e.g., BRIBE-TRIBE) and inhibitory priming effects for nonrhyming word body neighbors (e.g., FREAK–BREAK, see also Zuck, 1996). Additional studies have shown that the inhibitory priming effects for nonrhyming word body neighbors are observed in LDT only when pronounceable pseudowords are used as foils; if the foils are consonant strings then effects tend to be facilitory even for nonrhyming word body neighbors (Hanson & Fowler, 1987; Shulman, Hornak, & Sanders, 1978). It has been argued that with consonant string foils participants carry out only shallow phonological processing in LDT, and this shallow processing does not produce phonological interference for nonrhyming word body neighbors. Instead, the orthographic overlap for nonrhyming word body neighbors can facilitate lexical decision responses (Van Orden, Pennington, & Stone, 1990). Rueckl (1990) reported facilitory orthographic similarity effects in a series of experiments in which participants first completed a naming task (study phase) and

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then a subsequent tachistoscopic identification task (test phase). Included in the test phase were words that were orthographic neighbors of words that appeared in the study phase. Some of these orthographically similar words were body neighbors, but many were not; given the nature of RuecklÕs study design (targets could have several body neighbors among the primes, and vice versa) it is difficulty to quantify the proportion of primes and targets that were body neighbors. Tachistoscopic identification was more accurate for these orthographically similar words than for new (unrelated) targets. This orthographic similarity effect was substantially smaller than the facilitation observed for repeated words. Rueckl argued that the results were best explained in a connectionist framework, in terms of weight changes caused by processing words in the study phase. Orthographically similar words are represented by similar patterns of activation in the orthographic units, and because of a learning procedure, processing of these words in the study phase causes changes on weights to and from orthographic units in order that the system will settle more quickly the next time the stimulus is presented. When a similar stimulus is presented in the test phase, facilitation is observed. A similar connectionist account was offered by Becker and colleagues (Becker, Moscovitch, Behrmann, & Joordens, 1997; Joordens & Becker, 1997) to explain long-term semantic priming effects. These authors observed semantic priming effects that survived several intervening trials between primes and targets in LDT with pseudohomophone foils (nonwords that ‘‘sound’’ like real words, e.g., STOAN) and in animacy decisions but not in LDT with pseudoword foils (nonwords that do not ‘‘sound’’ like real words, e.g., STOON). Becker and colleagues attributed these long-term priming effects to learning that occurs when primes are processed. This learning influences target processing when primes and targets are similar at a level of representation that is relevant to the task. ‘‘Long-term priming will be observed only if the prime and target are sufficiently similar on some dimension and if that dimension plays a sufficient role in determining responses on whatever task is being used’’ (p. 1087). Becker and colleagues observed longterm semantic priming effects in tasks that invoked semantic processing (e.g., animacy decisions), and did not observe long-term semantic effects in tasks that involved less semantic processing (e.g., LDT with pseudoword foils, where orthographic familiarity is often a sufficient basis for responding, Balota & Chumbley, 1984). Hence, in order to observe long-term priming it is necessary to use a task that is sensitive to the type of information captured in the prime-target relationship. Similarly, Hughes and Whittlesea (2003) recently reported that whereas long-term semantic priming is not usually observed in naming or in lexical decision, it can be produced with a more demanding semantic

decision task. In Hughes and WhittleseaÕs tasks, participants made semantic decisions and on each trial judged category membership, or exemplar similarity, or feature association, for items from different categories. They found semantic priming effects across as many as 90 trials, as long as participants performed the same challenging semantic decision task on primes and on targets. Hughes and Whittlesea called this a transfer effect. As a result of processing the prime, a representation of the experience is formed, and that representation is recruited as a resource for target processing. Based on KolersÕ (1973, 1976) overlapping-operations account, Hughes and Whittlesea proposed that long-term priming will be observed when the cognitive procedures implemented to perform the prime task are sufficiently similar to the cognitive procedures implemented to perform the target task. Hughes and Whittlesea also argued that the operations performed on the primes and targets need to be distinctive from one trial to the next. This distinctiveness could be important for several reasons: for instance, it could encourage more elaborative processing, or it could encourage more distinctive representations of prime experience that provide a useful resource for target processing. This is a learning account, but one that includes episodic memory mechanisms that are not restricted to the visual word recognition system. The purpose of the present study was to address two questions about priming effects for rhyming and nonrhyming word body neighbors. The first is, how long do these effects last? As mentioned, the activation-based conspiracy model (Taraban & McClelland, 1987) predicts that the effects should last for a few seconds, while the learning account (Bowers et al., 2002; Burt & Humphreys, 1993) predicts that the effects should last substantially longer. This question is addressed in Experiments 1–4 using a naming task in order to support comparison to the Taraban and McClelland, Burt and Humphreys, and Pexman et al. studies. Participants were asked to name aloud a series of words; we embedded primes and targets (both related and unrelated prime-target pairs) in that series, and manipulated the spacing of primes and targets in order to examine the time course of priming effects for rhyming and nonrhyming word body neighbors. We first assessed priming with three prime-target intervals: (1) an immediate (3-s interval) condition, which involves no intervening items between primes and targets, (2) a 27-s condition, which involves eight intervening items between primes and targets and approximates the delay condition used in Burt and Humphreys, and (3) a 51-s condition, which involves 16 intervening items and is closer to the delay condition used by Bowers et al. The second question addressed in the present research is, to what extent do priming effects for word body neighbors depend on task demands? We tested this issue in the present Experiments 5, 7, 8, and 9 using the

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phonological lexical decision task (PLDT, e.g., does it sound like a real word?) and in Experiment 6 using the standard lexical decision task (LDT, e.g., is it a real word?). We selected the PLDT because it requires phonological processing and is more difficult than naming (McCann, Besner, & Davelaar, 1988; Pexman, Lupker, & Reggin, 2002). In the PLDT participants will be presented with words, pseudowords (e.g., SLINT), and pseudohomophones (e.g., BRANE). They will be told to decide whether each presented letter string sounds like a word, regardless of the stringÕs spelling. So they are to respond ‘‘yes’’ to words and also to pseudohomophones and to respond ‘‘no’’ to pseudowords. Another important characteristic of the PLDT is that it does not involve a familiar or automated decision, and response latencies tend to be longer in this task than in naming or LDT (McCann et al., 1988; Pexman et al., 2002; Taft, 1982; Unsworth & Pexman, 2003). Previous work with this task suggests that the presence of pseudohomophones encourages participants to adopt a phonological response strategy, such that even on word trials they engage in more extensive phonological processing than they would in a standard LDT (Pexman et al., 2002; Taft, 1982). McCann et al. argued that the PLDT involves both phonological code generation and a familiarity assessment, and that this latter decision component distinguishes the task from naming. We note that in the PLDT participants are asked to make what is essentially an unfamiliar (unusual, distinctive) familiarity assessment: once the phonological code is generated, participants decide whether that code corresponds to a real word, regardless of how the word is spelled. In this way, the PLDT invokes the kind of processing that Hughes and Whittlesea (2003) argued is important to longer term priming effects. We anticipated that the PLDT might be more sensitive than the naming task to priming effects from word body neighbors. That is, the PLDT might reveal learning effects that the naming task is not sufficiently sensitive to detect. Using both the naming tasks and PLDTs, we also included experiments involving rhyming exception words (e.g., SOOT–FOOT; Experiments 3 and 8). These rhyming word body neighbors provide a useful comparison for the nonrhyming body neighbors, allowing us to estimate the contributions made by shared phonology and shared orthography to the priming effects we observed.

Experiment 1 Method Participants In all of the experiments reported here, participants were undergraduates at the University of Calgary who received bonus credit for participation, reported that

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English was their first language and had normal or corrected-to-normal vision. There were 48 participants in Experiment 1. Apparatus Stimuli were presented in the centre of a 17-in. Sony Trinitron monitor controlled by a Macintosh G3 and presented using PsyScope (Cohen, MacWhinney, Flatt, & Provost, 1993). The letters were approximately 0.60 cm high and at eye level for all participants. The distance between each participant and the monitor screen was approximately 50 cm. Naming latencies were recorded by a microphone connected to a PsyScope response box. Stimuli Forty formally similar prime-target word pairs were selected such that the prime was an exception word and the target was a nonrhyming regular-inconsistent word from the same orthographic word body neighborhood (e.g., PINT–TINT). These are listed in Appendix A. We classified words as exceptions if they came from an inconsistent body neighborhood (neighborhood in which bodies are pronounced more than one way) and had the less frequent pronunciation. That is, summed frequency (based on values from Kucˇera & Francis, 1967) of all the words in the neighborhood that shared the exception pronunciation was lower than summed frequency of all the words in the neighborhood that had an alternative pronunciation. All primes and targets were monosyllabic words, 3–6 letters in length. For primes, mean printed frequency was 14.28 per million. For targets, mean printed frequency was 13.38 per million. In addition, 460 filler words were selected for use in Experiments 1–4. These are listed in Appendix C. Almost all of these (98 %) were consistent words from consistent body neighborhoods. The remainder were regular-inconsistent words from inconsistent body neighborhoods. All filler words were monosyllabic, 3–6 letters in length. Mean printed frequency of the filler words was 64.23 per million. Procedure Participants were told that they would be presented with a series of words on the computer screen, and that their task would be to name each word aloud as quickly and as accurately as possible. Participants first completed 32 practice trials. Following this, the experimental trials were presented. On each trial, a word was presented in the centre of the screen and remained there until participants made a naming response. Experiment 1 involved four priming conditions: unrelated (exception prime word was presented 3 s before an unrelated regular-inconsistent target word, e.g., BOWL– TINT), 3-s related (exception prime word was presented 3 s before a regular-inconsistent body neighbor target word, e.g., PINT–TINT), 27-s related (exception prime

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word was presented 27 s before a regular-inconsistent body neighbor target word, e.g., PINT–TINT), and 51-s related (exception prime word was presented 51 s before a regular-inconsistent body neighbor target word, e.g., PINT–TINT). In the unrelated and 3-s related conditions, no filler items were presented between primes and targets. In the 27-s related condition, 8 filler items appeared between primes and targets. In the 51-s related condition, 16 filler items appeared between primes and targets. In all cases, the interstimulus interval (ISI) was 3 s. Each priming condition was presented in a separate block of trials, and participants were offered a break between blocks. In order to make the length of the blocks roughly equivalent, we presented 10 filler items between targets and primes (that is, between targets of one primetarget pairing and primes of the subsequent prime-target pairing) in the unrelated and 3-s related blocks. We presented two filler items between targets and subsequent primes in the 27-s related block. No filler items were presented between targets and subsequent primes in the 51-s related block. Within this block structure, order of the filler items was randomized. In order that, across participants, each target word appeared in each priming condition the list of prime-target pairs was divided into four groups of 10 pairs. A given participant was presented with one group in each of the priming conditions. We ensured that each group of stimuli appeared in each priming condition, and that the order of the priming conditions (blocks) was counterbalanced across participants. This resulted in 16 versions of the task. Participants were assigned to versions by the order in which they appeared for the experiment. Naming errors for primes and targets were coded by an experimenter, who sat behind each participant during the naming task. Results and discussion In each of the experiments in this paper, the data for filler word trials were not included in the analyses. The

analyses were performed on data for trials on which the target words were presented. A target word trial was considered an error and excluded from the naming latency analysis if the target pronunciation latency was longer than 2500 ms or shorter than 250 ms (0.36% of trials), if there was a stutter or mechanical error on the prime or target (2.48% of trials), if the prime was mispronounced (4.37% of trials), or if the target was mispronounced (1.82% of trials). The percentage of pronunciation errors for target trials was so low that we did not analyze the error data further in this experiment. Mean latencies and mean error percentages are presented in Table 1. In all experiments reported in this paper, data were analyzed with both subjects (Fs or ts) and, separately, items (Fi or ti) treated as random factors. The analyses for Experiment 1 involved, first, a one-way ANOVA (Prime Condition: unrelated, 3-s interval, 27-s interval, 51-s interval) for naming latencies. Results of the ANOVA showed that the effect of prime condition approached significance (Fs (3, 141) = 2.40, p = .07, MSE = 1394.70; Fi (3, 117) = 2.41, p = .07, MSE = 1321.96). Second, we conducted planned comparisons contrasting target naming latencies in each related priming condition with the target naming latencies in the unrelated priming condition. For the 3-s related condition, target naming latencies were significantly slower than in the unrelated condition (ts (47) = 2.62, p < .05, SE = 6.98; ti (39) = 2.36, p < .05, SE = l7.92). Similarly, for the 27-s related condition, target naming latencies were slower than in the unrelated condition, but the difference was only significant in the subjects analysis (ts (47) = 2.16, p < .05, SE = 7.51; ti (39) = 1.68, p = .10, SE = 8.30). For the 51-s related condition, target naming latencies were not significantly different from those in the unrelated condition (ts (47) = 1.06, p = .26, SE = 8.12; ti < 1). We also considered whether there was sufficient power in this experiment to detect significant long-term priming effects. The priming effect observed in the 3-s condition was associated with a

Table 1 Mean target naming latencies (ms) and target error percentages (standard deviations in parentheses) for Experiment 1 (exception primes, regular-inconsistent targets, e.g., PINT–TINT) Priming condition

Number of filler items between prime and target

RT

Error

Priming effect (RT)

95% CI for priming effect (RT) Lower limit

Unrelated 3-s related 27-s related 51-s related Filler words

0 0 8 16 n/a

507 526 523 516 514

Note. Naming errors for filler words were not coded. * p < .05 by subjects. ** p < .05 by items.

(105.09) (126.00) (119.92) (97.98) (141.51)

0.83 2.08 2.08 2.29

(9.10) (14.30) (14.05) (14.98)

18*,** 16* 9

32 31 25

Upper limit 4 1 +8

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CohenÕs d of .55. The power to detect an effect of this size in the 51-s condition, at one-tailed a = .05, was .92. Thus, we are confident that the power in this experiment was sufficient. Significant inhibitory priming was observed with a 3-s interval between primes and targets, and there was some evidence of residual interference at 27 s, although the effect at the 27-s interval was not significant in the items analysis. This finding provides some support for Burt and HumphreysÕ (1993) claim that inhibitory priming for nonrhyming word body neighbors can be observed even with a 30-s delay between primes and targets. After completing Experiment 1, we identified a potential problem. That is, the results of Experiment 1 might have been confounded by blocking or sequencing effects. A number of studies (e.g., Chateau & Lupker, 2003; Jared, 1997b; Kinoshita & Lupker, 2002, 2003; Lupker, Brown, & Colombo, 1997; Monsell, Patterson, Graham, Hughes, & Milroy, 1992) have shown that naming latencies for words are modulated by the composition of the block in which those words are presented. Skilled readers have some ability to modulate their naming responses to facilitate their overall efficiency across a block of trials in the naming task. There is considerable debate about whether those blocking effects should be attributed to shifts in processing strategies or shifts in output criteria but the important point, for our purposes, is that one should be mindful of the fact that block composition can influence naming latencies. Naming latencies can be influenced by the type of words presented in the block (difficulty of naming the words presented) and also by trial-by-trial sequence effects (Taylor & Lupker, 2001). There are probably additional block characteristics that influence naming latencies that have not yet been examined. In order to be sure that any priming effects we observed were genuine, the safest approach would seem to be to use unrelated conditions that involve, as much as possible, the same block composition and structure as in the related conditions. We had achieved this for the 3-s related condition in Experiment 1, because the unrelated condition had the same block characteristics and structure. We had not accomplished this for the 27- or 51-s conditions. In contrast to the unrelated condition, the 27- and 51-s conditions involved naming a series of several (8 or 16) consistent words between primes and targets. These consistent words are relatively easy to name and we cannot rule out the possibility that any effects we observed for target naming might be a consequence of having just named a string of easy-to-name consistent words, rather than a real effect of the prime. To remedy this, in the remaining experiments we present unrelated conditions and related conditions in blocks of the same composition and structure. In Experiment 2b, we reassessed priming effects at 27- and 51-s prime-target intervals with these more appropriate unrelated conditions. We also included 5-s

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related and 5-s unrelated conditions (Experiment 2a) in order to further establish the time course of priming effects for nonrhyming word body neighbors.

Experiment 2 Method Participants There were 48 participants in Experiment 2a and 48 in Experiment 2b. Apparatus. The apparatus for Experiment 2 was the same as described for Experiment 1. Stimuli The stimuli for Experiment 2 were the same as described for Experiment 1. Procedure The procedure for Experiment 2 involved creating related and unrelated conditions that had exactly the same structure, except that in the unrelated conditions the primes and targets were shuffled so that the exception word prime appearing before the regular inconsistent word target did not share the targetÕs word body (e.g., BOWL–TINT). In Experiment 2a primes and targets were presented at 5-s intervals, with no intervening items. As in Experiment 1, 10 filler items were presented between the target word and the subsequent prime word. The ISI for Experiment 2a was 5 s. In Experiment 2a two word lists were required (20 prime-target pairs per list) and, again, each word pair appeared with equal frequency in each priming condition. In Experiment 2b there were four priming conditions: 27-s related, 27-s unrelated, 51-s related, and 51-s unrelated. So, for instance, in the 27-s unrelated condition, BOWL appeared 27 s before TINT, and 8 filler trials were presented during that interval. In the 27-s related condition, in contrast, PINT appeared 27 s before TINT and 8 filler trials were presented during that interval. In both cases, two more filler trials were presented between each target word and the subsequent prime. The ISI for Experiment 2b was 3 s. In Experiment 2b the four word lists (10 prime-target pairs per list) from Experiment 1 were used in order that, across participants, each word pair appeared with equal frequency in each priming condition. In all other respects the procedure was the same as in Experiment 1. Results and discussion A target word trial was considered an error and excluded from the latency analysis if the target pronunciation latency was longer than 2500 ms or shorter than 250 ms (0.25% of trials in Experiment 2a, 0.21% of trials

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in Experiment 2b), if there was a stutter or mechanical error on the prime or target (0.97% of trials in Experiment 2a, 0.82% of trials in Experiment 2b), if the prime was mispronounced (4.81% of trials in Experiment 2a, 5.19% of trials in Experiment 2b), or if the target was mispronounced (1.43% of trials in Experiment 2a, 1.41% of trials in Experiment 2b). The percentages of pronunciation errors for target trials were so low that we did not analyze the error data further in this experiment. Mean latencies and mean error percentages are presented in Table 2. The analyses for Experiment 2a were planned comparisons contrasting target naming latencies in the related priming condition with target naming latencies in the matched unrelated priming condition. For the 5-s related condition, target naming latencies were significantly slower than in the 5-s unrelated condition (ts (47) = 2.85, p < .01, SE = 7.88; ti (39) = 2.55, p < .05, SE = 9.30). The analyses for Experiment 2b involved, first, a 2 (relatedness: related, unrelated) by 2 (interval: 27-s, 51-s) ANOVA for target naming latencies. This analysis produced no significant results, as there was no effect of relatedness, no effect of interval, and no interaction effect (all F < 1) for target naming latencies. Second, we conducted planned comparisons contrasting target naming latencies in the related priming conditions with the target naming latencies in the matched unrelated priming conditions. For the 27-s related condition, target naming latencies were not significantly different from those in the 27-s unrelated condition (ts < 1; ti (39) = 1.06, p = .29, SE = 8.61). Similarly, for the 51-s related condition, target naming latencies were not significantly different from those in the 51-s unrelated condition (ts (47) = 1.13, p = .26, SE = 7.64; ti (39) = 1.84, p = .08, SE = 7.99).

We considered whether there was sufficient power in this experiment to detect significant long-term priming effects. The priming effect observed in the 5-s condition was associated with a CohenÕs d of .58. The power to detect an effect of this size in the 27- or 51-s condition, at one-tailed a = .05, was .93. Thus, we are confident that the power in this experiment was sufficient. Significant inhibitory priming was observed for nonrhyming word body neighbors with a 5-s interval between prime and target, but there was no evidence of residual interference at 27 or 51 s. This pattern of results is not consistent with that reported in Experiment 1, where we observed some evidence for inhibitory priming after a 27-s delay. In Experiment 2, we presented the unrelated primes and targets in blocks of the same structure as the blocks in which related primes and targets were presented. This approach minimizes the influence of sequence and blocking effects on priming effects in the naming task. We would argue, therefore, that the unrelated conditions used for the 27- and 51-s conditions in Experiment 2 are more appropriate than the unrelated condition used for the 27- and 51-s conditions in Experiment 1, and so the results of Experiment 2 provide a more accurate description of the time course of priming effects for nonrhyming word body neighbors. As such, it appears that these interference effects survive a 5-s prime-target delay but not a 27-s prime-target delay or a 51-s prime-target delay. The different results we observed in Experiments 1 and 2 highlight the fact that choice of control condition can have a strong influence on the priming effects observed. We next turned to the question of whether facilitation effects can be observed for rhyming word body neighbors, and, if so, whether those effects follow a similar time course to the interference effects observed for

Table 2 Mean target naming latencies (ms) and target error percentages (standard deviations in parentheses) for Experiment 2 (exception primes, regular-inconsistent targets, e.g., PINT–TINT) Priming condition

Number of filler items between prime and target

RT

Error

Experiment 2a 5-s unrelated 5-s related Filler words

0 0 n/a

552 (134.96) 575 (163.02) 551 (140.19)

0.41 (6.03) 2.04 (14.22)

Experiment 2b 27-s unrelated 27-s related 51-s unrelated 51-s related Filler words

8 8 16 16 n/a

546 541 540 549 540

1.46 1.04 0.83 2.29

Note. Naming errors for filler words were not coded. * p < .05 by subjects. ** p < .05 by items.

(149.32) (179.15) (121.35) (131.59) (133.97)

(12.32) (10.42) (8.89) (15.05)

Priming effect (RT)

95% CI for priming effect (RT) Lower limit

Upper limit

38

7

+5

10

+20

9

24

+7

23*,**

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nonrhyming word body neighbors. Both the activation and learning accounts predict that the time course of facilitory effects for rhyming word body neighbors should mirror the time course of interference effects for nonrhyming word body neighbors.

Experiment 3 Method Participants There were 48 participants in Experiment 3a, 48 participants in Experiment 3b, and 36 participants in Experiment 3c. Apparatus The apparatus for Experiment 3 was the same as described for Experiment 1. Stimuli The stimuli for Experiment 3 were 24 prime-target word pairs selected such that the prime and target were rhyming exception words from the same word body neighborhood (e.g., FOOT–SOOT). These are listed in Appendix B. There are only a small number of body neighborhoods in English that have two or more exception words, and we virtually exhausted these in order to select stimuli for this experiment. All primes and targets were monosyllabic words, 3–6 letters in length. We tried to select primes and targets that had frequency values

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not substantially higher than those for stimuli used in Experiments 1 and 2. For primes presented in Experiment 3, mean printed frequency was 26.83 per million (Kucˇera & Francis, 1967). For targets, mean printed frequency was 28.71 per million. Procedure The procedure for Experiment 3 was similar to that used for Experiment 2. In each of Experiments 3a, 3b, and 3c there were two priming conditions: 3-s related and 3-s unrelated in Experiment 3a, 27-s related and 27-s unrelated in Experiment 3b, and 51-s related and 51-s unrelated in Experiment 3c. The ISI in all cases was 3 s. In order that, across participants, each target word appeared in each priming condition the list of prime-target pairs was divided into 2 groups of 12 pairs. A given participant was presented with one group in each of the two priming conditions (blocks) they completed. Again, order of blocks was counterbalanced across participants. Results and discussion A target word trial was considered an error and excluded from the latency analysis if the target pronunciation latency was longer than 2500 ms or shorter than 250 ms (0.51% of trials), if there was a stutter or mechanical error on the prime or target (1.42% of trials), if the prime was mispronounced (1.20% of trials), or if the target was mispronounced (9.48% of trials). Mean latencies and mean error percentages are presented in Table 3.

Table 3 Mean target naming latencies (ms) and target error percentages (standard deviations in parentheses) for Experiment 3 (exception primes, exception targets, e.g., FOOT–SOOT) Priming condition

Number of filler items between prime and target

RT

Error

Priming effect (RT)

95% CI for priming effect (RT)

Priming effect (error)

Lower Upper limit limit

Lower Upper limit limit

Experiment 3a 3-s unrelated 3-s related Filler words

0 0 n/a

563 (161.41) 10.94 (22.23) 543 (124.39) 5.21 (31.24) 525 (107.05)

+20*,**

+3

+36

+5.73*

Experiment 3b 27-s unrelated 27-s related Filler words

8 8 n/a

553 (157.27) 11.46 (31.88) 554 (164.06) 9.37 (29.17) 517 (99.06)

1

23

+25

Experiment 3c 51-s unrelated 51-s related Filler words

16 16 n/a

565 (163.41) 10.19 (30.28) 559 (133.39) 10.00 (30.03) 526 (119.15)

+6

19

+31

Note. Naming errors for filler words were not coded. * p < .05 by subjects. ** p < .05 by items.

95% CI for priming effect (error)

+2.64

+8.81

+2.09

1.43

+5.60

+0.19

3.36

+3.83

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The target words in this experiment were exception words, and these targets produced more pronunciation errors than did the regular-inconsistent targets in our previous experiments. Consequently, there were sufficient numbers of target naming errors in this experiment to warrant analysis. The analyses for Experiment 3 involved, first, 2 (relatedness: related, unrelated) by 3 (interval: 3-s, 27-s, 51-s) ANOVAs for naming latencies and naming errors. The interaction of relatedness and interval was not significant in the analysis of naming latencies (Fs (2, 129) = 1.00, p = .37, MSE = 2585.69; Fi (2, 46) = 1.80, p = .17, MSE = 1153.73) or in the analysis of naming errors (Fs (2, 129) = 2.69, p = .07, MSE = 5.12; Fi (2, 46) = 1.91, p = .16, MSE = 6.01). The main effect of relatedness was not significant in the analysis of naming latencies (Fs (1, 129) = 1.63, p = .20, MSE = 2585.69; Fi (1, 23) = 3.38, p = .08, MSE = 2150.73) but was significant by subjects in the analysis of naming errors (Fs (1, 129) = 7.45, p < .01, MSE = 5.12; Fi (1, 23) = 1.75, p = .20, MSE = 1.52). The main effect of interval was not significant in the analysis of naming latencies (both F < 1) or in the analysis of naming errors (Fs (2, 129) = 2.08, p = .13, MSE = 6.88; Fi (2, 46) = 2.60, p = .09, MSE = 3.22). Second, we conducted planned comparisons contrasting target naming latencies and error percentages in each related priming condition with the target naming latencies and error percentages in the matched unrelated priming condition. For Experiment 3a, in the 3-s related condition, target naming latencies were significantly faster than in the 3-s unrelated condition (ts (47) = 2.38, p < .05, SE = 8.14; ti (23) = 2.37, p < .05, SE = 11.36), and there were significantly fewer target naming errors produced in the 3-s related condition than in the 3-s unrelated condition, although this error difference was only significant by subjects (ts (47) = 3.74, p < .01, SE = 2.40; ti (23) = 1.69, p = .11, SE = 2.99). In Experiment 3b, however, for the 27-s related condition neither target naming latencies (both t < 1) nor target naming error percentages (ts (47) = 1.19, p = .24, SE = 2.01; ti < 1) were significantly different from those in the 27-s unrelated condition. Similarly, in Experiment 3c, for the 51-s related condition, neither target naming latencies (ts < 1; ti (23) = 1.21, p = .24, SE = 12.52) nor target naming error percentages (both t < 1) were significantly different from those in the 51-s unrelated condition. We considered whether there was sufficient power in this experiment to detect significant long-term priming effects. The priming effect observed in the 3-s condition was associated with a CohenÕs d of .50. The power to detect an effect of this size in the 27- or 51-s condition, at one-tailed a = .05, was .88. Thus, we are confident that the power in this experiment was sufficient.

Significant facilitation was observed with a 3-s interval between prime and target, but there was no evidence of residual facilitation at 27- or 51-s intervals. The time course for these facilitation effects mirrors that for the interference effects observed in Experiment 2: interference or facilitation was observed in the immediate priming conditions (3 or 5 s, with no intervening items) but not at the longer 27- or 51-s intervals. The results of Experiment 3 also confirm that the interference effects observed in Experiments 1 and 2 for nonrhyming PINT–TINT pairs are phonologically based. The FOOT–SOOT and PINT–TINT pairs have the same degree of orthographic overlap and the primes in both cases are exception words. Yet, in Experiment 3, the priming effects for rhyming FOOT–SOOT word pairs are facilitory. When primes and targets are named, the rhyming quality of FOOT–SOOT pairs generates facilitation while the nonrhyming quality of PINT– TINT pairs produces interference. In the experiments reported thus far, we observed interference for nonrhyming word body neighbors at a 5-s interval between prime and target, and facilitation for rhyming word body neighbors at a 3-s interval between prime and target. The duration of these effects seems reasonably consistent with an activation-based explanation, and does not require a learning explanation. By an activation account, however, one would not expect the priming effects to last much longer than this, and the effects should not survive presentation of intervening items between primes and targets. We devised Experiment 4 to test this expectation.

Experiment 4 In Experiment 4, we presented exception word primes and regular-inconsistent targets at delays of 6 and 9 s in order to further test the time course of interference effects for nonrhyming word body neighbors. This experiment allowed us to test the effect of intervening unrelated items on these priming effects. For the 6-s priming condition, 1 intervening unrelated item was presented between prime and target. For the 9-s priming condition, two intervening unrelated items were presented between prime and target. Method Participants There were 48 participants in Experiment 4. Apparatus The apparatus for Experiment 4 was the same as described for Experiment 1.

P.M. Pexman et al. / Journal of Memory and Language 53 (2005) 315–341

Stimuli The stimuli for Experiment 4 were the same as described for Experiment 1. Procedure The procedure for Experiment 4 was similar to that used for Experiment 2. Each related condition had its own unrelated condition, resulting in a total of four priming conditions. Related and unrelated conditions had exactly the same structure, except that in the unrelated conditions the primes and targets were shuffled so that the exception word prime appearing before the regular inconsistent word target did not share the targetÕs word body (e.g., BOWL–TINT). So, for instance, in the 6-s unrelated condition, BOWL appeared 6 s before TINT, and one filler trial was presented during that interval. In the 6-s related condition PINT appeared 6 s before TINT, and one filler trial was presented during that interval. In both cases, nine more filler trials were presented between each target word and the subsequent prime. In the 9-s unrelated condition, BOWL appeared 9 s before TINT, and two filler trials were presented during that interval. In the 9-s related condition, in contrast, PINT appeared 9 s before TINT, and two filler trials were presented during that interval. In both cases, eight more filler trials were presented between each target word and the subsequent prime. The ISI was always 3 s. We presented all four of the conditions to one group of participants. The four word lists (10 prime-target pairs per list) from Experiment 1 were used in order that, across participants, each word pair appeared with equal frequency in each priming condition. Again, order of blocks was counterbalanced across participants. Results and discussion A target word trial was considered an error and excluded from the latency analysis if the target pronunciation latency was longer than 2500 ms or shorter than 250 ms (0.41% of trials), if there was a stutter or mechanical error on the prime or target (1.20% of trials),

325

if the prime was mispronounced (5.30% of trials), or if the target was mispronounced (1.41% of trials). The percentage of pronunciation errors for target trials was so low that we did not analyze the error data further in this experiment. Mean latencies and mean error percentages are presented in Table 4. The analyses for Experiment 4 involved, first, a 2 (relatedness: related, unrelated) by 2 (interval: 6 s, 9 s) ANOVA for naming latencies. This analysis produced no significant results, as there was no effect of relatedness, no effect of interval, and no interaction effect (all F < 1) for target naming latencies. Second, we conducted planned comparisons contrasting target naming latencies in each related priming condition with the target naming latencies in the matched unrelated priming condition. For the 6-s related condition, target naming latencies were not significantly different from those in the 6-s unrelated condition (both t < 1). Similarly, for the 9-s related condition target naming latencies were not significantly different from those in the 9-s unrelated condition (both t < 1). We considered whether there was sufficient power in this experiment to detect significant long-term priming effects. The priming effect observed in the 5-s condition of Experiment 2 was associated with a CohenÕs d of .58. The power to detect an effect of this size in the 6or 9-s condition, at one-tailed a = .05, was .93. Thus, we are confident that the power in this experiment was sufficient. Significant inhibitory priming for nonrhyming word body neighbors was not observed in this experiment. At a 6-s prime-target delay, and with one intervening unrelated item, these interference effects were eliminated. Thus, using what we believe to be appropriate control conditions, we can find no evidence that interference effects for nonrhyming word body neighbors survive presentation of intervening unrelated items in a word naming task. These findings are consistent with an activation account of priming effects for word body neighbors. We next examined whether priming effects from word body neighbors last longer in the context of a more

Table 4 Mean target naming latencies (ms) and target error percentages (standard deviations in parentheses) for Experiment 4 (exception primes, regular-inconsistent targets, e.g., PINT–TINT) Priming condition

6-s unrelated 6-s related 9-s unrelated 9-s related Filler words

Number of filler items between prime and target

1 1 2 2 n/a

RT

521 519 516 516 515

Note. Naming errors for filler words were not coded.

(116.25) (108.17) (93.79) (110.26) (104.23)

Error

0.62 1.25 1.46 2.29

(7.89) (11.12) (12.00) (14.98)

Priming effect (RT)

95% CI for priming effect (RT) Lower limit

Upper limit

+2

11

+13

0

17

+15

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difficult phonological task. Task difficulty is important to long term semantic priming effects (e.g., Becker et al., 1997; Hughes & Whittlesea, 2003) and may also be important to long term priming effects for word body neighbors. We chose to use the PLDT for this purpose because this task requires phonological processing (in order to respond correctly to pseudohomophone trials), but is considerably more difficult and distinctive than the standard naming task.

Experiment 5 Method Participants There were 52 participants in Experiment 5. Four participants were excluded from analyses because they failed to meet the accuracy criterion (70% accuracy) for pseudohomophone trials in the PLDT. Apparatus The apparatus for Experiment 5 was the same as described for Experiment 1, except that in this experiment response latencies were recorded by participantsÕ button press on a PsyScope response box. Stimuli The prime-target stimuli for Experiment 5 were the same 40 pairs of nonrhyming word body neighbors as described for Experiment 1. In this experiment, however, the nature of the filler words was changed to create the PLDT. That is, it was necessary that both pseudowords (which would require a ‘‘no’’ response) and pseudohomophones (which would require a ‘‘yes’’ response) be presented in the task. The pseudowords and pseudohomophones were selected from previous studies in our laboratory (e.g., Pexman, Lupker, & Jared, 2001; Pexman et al., 2002). The final list of stimuli included 238 pseudowords, 120 pseudohomophones, 40 consistent filler words, and the 80 prime-target stimuli. The pseudowords, pseudohomophones, and filler words are listed in Appendix D. Procedure Participants were told that they would be presented with a series of letter strings on the computer screen, and that their task would be to decide whether each string sounded like a word, as quickly and as accurately as possible. Participants made their response by pressing either the left (labeled ‘‘no’’) or right (labeled ‘‘yes’’) button on a PsyScope response box. Participants first completed 40 practice trials and were given verbal feedback about incorrect responses. Some participants needed additional instruction during practice to ensure that they made their decisions based on the

sounds they generated for the letter strings, rather than the spellings. Following this, the experimental trials were presented. There were four priming conditions: 3-s related, 3-s unrelated, 27-s related, and 27-s unrelated. Related and unrelated conditions had exactly the same structure, except that in the unrelated conditions the primes and targets were shuffled so that the exception word prime appearing before the regular inconsistent word target did not share the targetÕs word body (e.g., BOWL– TINT). The four word lists (10 prime-target pairs per list) from Experiment 1 were used in order that, across participants, each word pair appeared with equal frequency in each priming condition. In addition, we needed to present pseudowords on approximately half of the trials (to elicit ‘‘no’’ responses) and a considerable number of pseudohomophones (to encourage a phonological response strategy). As such, the composition of each block contained 50% pseudowords, another 25% pseudohomophones, 17% primes and targets, and 8% filler words. Otherwise, the block structure was similar to that used in Experiment 2: in the 3-s conditions there were no intervening items between primes and targets, and 10 trials were presented between targets and subsequent primes. In the 27-s conditions there were eight intervening items between primes and targets, and two trials were presented between targets and subsequent primes. Again, order of blocks was counterbalanced across participants. Results and discussion A target word trial was considered an error and excluded from the latency analysis if the target response latency was longer than 2500 ms or shorter than 250 ms (1.11% of trials), if there was an error on the prime (3.94% of trials), or on the target (7.78% of trials). Mean response latencies and mean error percentages are presented in Table 5. The analyses for Experiment 5 involved, first, 2 (relatedness: related, unrelated) by 2 (interval: 3-s, 27-s) ANOVAs for response latencies and response errors. This analysis produced a significant main effect of interval in the latency analysis (Fs (1, 47) = 12.06, p < .001, MSE = 9972.44; Fi (1, 39) = 18.21, p < .001, MSE = 7368.96) but not in the error analysis (both F < 1). The nature of this main effect was that response latencies for targets tended to be slower in the 27-s interval conditions than in the 3-s interval conditions. This main effect of interval was not expected but does replicate in each of the subsequent experiments and proves to be important to the theoretical explanation offered in the General discussion. The main effect of relatedness was not significant in the latency analysis (Fs (1, 47) = 1.60, p = .21, MSE = 15564.93; Fi (1, 39) = 1.95, p = .17, MSE = 8108.59) but was marginally significant by

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327

Table 5 Mean PLDT target response latencies (ms) and target error percentages (standard deviations in parentheses) for Experiment 5 (exception primes, regular-inconsistent targets, e.g., PINT–TINT) Priming condition

Number of filler items between prime and target

RT

Error

Priming effect (RT)

95% CI for priming effect (RT)

Priming effect (error)

Lower Upper limit limit 3-s unrelated 3-s related 27-s unrelated 27-s related Filler words Pseudohomophones Pseudowords * **

0 0 8 8 n/a n/a n/a

749 744 813 784 748 1014 1216

(284.79) 8.54 (25.42) (305.49) 7.50 (21.24) (340.74) 10.83 (25.04) (297.62) 6.88 (17.58) (296.41) 4.02 (19.28) (373.87) 13.42 (34.04) (438.12) 6.98 (24.89)

95% CI for priming effect (error) Lower Upper limit limit

+5

40

+56

+1.04

2.76

+4.84

+39**

1

+97

+3.95*,** +0.10

+7.78

p < .05 by subjects. p < .05 by items.

subjects in the error analysis (Fs (1, 47) = 3.95, p = .05, MSE = 8.10; Fi (1, 39) = 2.75, p = .10, MSE = 9.18). The interaction of interval and relatedness was not significant in the latency analysis (both F < 1) or in the error analysis (Fs (1, 47) = 1.07, p = .31, MSE = 10.33; Fi (1, 39) = 1.27, p = .27, MSE = 6.88). Second, we conducted planned comparisons contrasting target response latencies and target error percentages in each related priming condition with the target response latencies and target error percentages in the matched unrelated priming condition. For the 3-s related condition, target response latencies were not significantly different from those in the 3-s unrelated condition (both t < 1), and there was similarly no difference in target errors produced in the 3-s related and unrelated conditions (both t < 1). For the 27-s related condition, however, target response latencies were faster than in the 27-s unrelated condition, although the effect was marginally significant by subjects (ts (47) = 1.97, p = .05, SE = 24.51; ti (39) = 2.12, p < .05, SE = 15.91). There were also significantly fewer target errors in the 27-s related condition than in the 27-s unrelated condition (ts (47) = 2.10, p < .05, SE = 1.90; ti (39) = 2.33, p < .05, SE = 1.69). We considered whether there was sufficient power in this experiment to detect significant priming effects. The priming effect observed in the 27-s condition was associated with a CohenÕs d of .42. The power to detect an effect of this size in the 3-s condition, at one-tailed a = .05, was .80. Thus, the power in this experiment was sufficient. In this experiment there was no evidence for facilitation or interference with a 3-s interval between prime and target, but there was significant facilitation with a 27-s interval between prime and target. This pattern of results suggests that these primes are having a very

different effect on target processing in the PLDT than they did in the naming tasks. The nonrhyming word body neighbors (e.g., PINT– TINT) used in this experiment share spelling of the word body but do not share phonology. Thus, the only basis for facilitation effects is the orthographic similarity of primes and targets. The notion that orthographic similarity for nonrhyming word body neighbors could produce delayed facilitation effects required further investigation. As such, in Experiment 6, we used a standard lexical decision task involving the same PINT–TINT stimuli as in Experiment 5. This LDT involved the same pseudowords as in Experiment 5, and should be performed based on orthographic familiarity, with fairly shallow phonological processing (Unsworth & Pexman, 2003). The experiment allowed us to determine whether the effects observed in Experiment 5 were strictly the result of orthographic similarity of primes and targets or whether the particular demands of the PLDT contributed to the long-term effects.

Experiment 6 Method Participants There were 49 participants in Experiment 6. One participant was excluded from analyses because they failed to meet the accuracy criterion (70% accuracy) for nonword trials in the LDT. Apparatus The apparatus for Experiment 6 was the same as described for Experiment 5.

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action of interval and relatedness was not significant in the latency analysis (both F < 1) or in the error analysis (both F < 1). Second, we conducted planned comparisons contrasting target response latencies and target error percentages in each related priming condition with the target response latencies and target error percentages in the matched unrelated priming condition. For the 3-s related condition, target response latencies were not significantly different from those in the 3-s unrelated condition (ts (47) = 1.28, p = .21, SE = 12.30; ti (39) = 1.04, p = .31, SE = 17.02), and there was similarly no significant difference in target errors produced in the 3-s related and unrelated conditions (both t < 1). Similarly, for the 27-s related condition target response latencies were not significantly different from those in the 27-s unrelated condition (ts < 1; ti (39) = 1.12, p = .26, SE = 16.31). There was no significant difference in the target errors produced in the 27-s related and 27-s unrelated conditions (both t < 1). We considered whether there was sufficient power in this experiment to detect significant priming effects. The priming effect observed in the 27-s condition in Experiment 5 was associated with a CohenÕs d of .42. The power to detect an effect of this size in the 3- or 27-s condition of this experiment, at one-tailed a = .05, was .80. Thus, the power in this experiment was sufficient. The LDT used in this experiment should be sensitive to effects of orthographic familiarity. Yet we observed no significant facilitation from nonrhyming word body neighbors in either the immediate or delayed priming conditions. Hence, the delayed facilitation effect observed for nonrhyming word body neighbors in Experiment 5 is not simply attributable to orthographic similarity for nonrhyming word body neighbors. Instead, the delayed facilitation effect must also depend on conditions that are present in PLDT but not in LDT or in naming tasks.

Stimuli The prime-target stimuli for Experiment 6 were the same as described for Experiment 5. In addition, 200 filler words and 200 pseudowords were selected for use in this experiment. The filler words were drawn from those listed in Appendix C. The pseudowords were drawn from those listed in Appendix D. Procedure Experiment 6 involved a standard LDT, so participants were asked to decide whether each letter string presented was a real English word. There were four priming conditions: 3-s related, 3-s unrelated, 27-s related, and 27-s unrelated. The block structure was the same as that used in Experiment 5. Results and discussion A target word trial was considered an error and excluded from the latency analysis if the target response latency was longer than 2500 ms or shorter than 250 ms (0.10% of trials), or if there was an error on the prime (6.30% of trials) or on the target (8.97% of trials). Mean latencies and mean error percentages are presented in Table 6. The analyses for Experiment 6 involved, first, 2 (relatedness: related, unrelated) by 2 (interval: 3-s, 27-s) ANOVAs for response latencies and response errors. The effect of interval was significant in the latency analysis (Fs (1, 47) = 6.55, p < .05, MSE = 6566.51; Fi (1, 39) = 8.31, p < .01, MSE = 8845.56) but not in the error analysis (both F < 1). The nature of this main effect was that target latencies tended to be slower in the 27-s interval conditions than in the 3-s interval conditions. The main effect of relatedness was not significant in the latency analysis (Fs (1, 47) = 1.91, p = .17, MSE = 2911.88; Fi (1, 39) = 2.44, p = .13, MSE = 5380.40) or in the error analysis (both F < 1). The inter-

Table 6 Mean LDT target response latencies (ms) and target error percentages (standard deviations in parentheses) for Experiment 6 (exception primes, regular-inconsistent targets, e.g., PINT–TINT) Priming condition

Number of filler items between prime and target

RT

Error

Priming effect (RT)

95% CI for priming effect (RT)

Priming effect (error)

Lower Upper limit limit 3-s unrelated 3-s related 27-s unrelated 27-s related Filler words Pseudowords *p **p

< .05 by subjects. < .05 by items.

0 0 8 8 n/a n/a

613 595 639 634 600 738

(188.68) (214.11) (235.22) (212.79) (181.04) (225.85)

13.13 11.67 14.02 13.33 3.69 7.36

(33.80) (32.14) (34.75) (34.03) (18.86) (26.11)

95% CI for priming effect (error) Lower Upper limit limit

+18

9

+40

+1.46

3.10

+6.02

+5

28

+39

+0.69

3.46

+4.92

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presented between targets and subsequent primes. In the 9-s conditions there were two intervening items between primes and targets, and eight trials were presented between targets and subsequent primes.

The delayed facilitation for nonrhyming word body neighbors observed in Experiment 5 may be due to orthographic similarity in the context of the PLDT, but it is not at all clear why the same facilitation effect was not observed in the immediate condition in Experiment 5. It seems that, in PLDT, significant facilitation for nonrhyming word body neighbors emerges sometime between the immediate and delayed priming intervals. We next addressed the issue of when this priming effect emerges. Accordingly, in the next experiment, we tested for priming at 6- and 9-s intervals in PLDT.

Results and discussion A target word trial was considered an error and excluded from the latency analysis if the target response latency was longer than 2500 ms or shorter than 250 ms (3.31% of trials), or if there was an error on the prime (1.80% of trials) or on the target (5.46% of trials). Mean latencies and mean error percentages are presented in Table 7. The analyses for Experiment 7 involved, first, 2 (relatedness: related, unrelated) by 2 (interval: 6-s, 9-s) ANOVAs for response latencies and response errors. The effect of interval approached significance by subjects and was significant by items in the latency analysis (Fs (1, 39) = 3.40, p = .07, MSE = 8352.82; Fi (1, 39) = 5.35, p < .05, MSE = 5799.49) but not in the error analysis (Fs < 1; Fi (1, 39) = 1.19, p = .28, MSE = 34.99). The nature of this main effect was that response latencies for targets tended to be slower in the 9-s interval conditions than in the 6-s interval conditions. The main effect of relatedness was significant in the latency analysis (Fs (1, 39) = 13.83, p < .001, MSE = 4250.16; Fi (1, 39) = 8.76, p < .005, MSE = 7581.50) but not in the error analysis (Fs (1, 39) = 3.95, p = .15, MSE = 47.93; Fi (1, 39) = 1.26, p = .27, MSE = 69.42). The nature of this main effect was that response latencies for targets in the related conditions were faster than response latencies for targets in the unrelated conditions. The interaction of interval and relatedness was not significant in the latency analysis (both F < 1) or in the error analysis (both F < 1). Second, we conducted planned comparisons contrasting target response latencies and target error percentages in each related priming condition with the

Experiment 7 Method Participants There were 48 participants in Experiment 7. Eight participants were excluded from analyses because they failed to meet the accuracy criterion (70% accuracy) for pseudohomophone trials in the PLDT. Apparatus The apparatus for Experiment 7 was the same as described for Experiment 5. Stimuli The prime-target stimuli for Experiment 7 were the same as described for Experiment 5. Procedure The procedure was the same as for Experiment 5, except that here the four priming conditions were: 6-s related, 6-s unrelated, 9-s related, and 9-s unrelated. The block structure was similar to that used in Experiment 4: in the 6-s conditions there was 1 intervening item between primes and targets, and nine trials were

Table 7 Mean PLDT target response latencies (ms) and target error percentages (standard deviations in parentheses) for experiment 7 (exception primes, regular-inconsistent targets, e.g., PINT–TINT) Priming condition

Number of filler items between prime and target

RT

Error

Priming effect (RT)

95% CI for priming effect (RT)

Priming effect (error)

Lower Upper limit limit 6-s unrelated 6-s related 9-s unrelated 9-s related Filler words Pseudohomophones Pseudowords * **

p < .05 by subjects. p < .05 by items.

1 1 2 2 n/a n/a n/a

684 (256.90) 4.36 (17.94) 646 (212.21) 5.88 (24.14) 708 (248.80) 5.42 (17.46) 673 (227.28) 6.81 (29.91) 660 (221.6) 1.80 (13.31) 910 (329.18) 13.79 (34.48) 1103 (408.55) 6.42 (24.51)

95% CI for priming effect (error) Lower Upper Limit limit

+38*,**

+1

+71

1.52

5.33

+1.34

+35***

+12

+68

1.39

4.96

+2.46

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target response latencies and target error percentages in the matched unrelated priming condition. For the 6-s related condition, target response latencies were significantly faster than in the 6-s unrelated condition (ts (39) = 2.27, p < .05, SE = 16.42; ti (39) = 2.10, p < .05, SE = 17.31), but there was no difference in percentage of target errors produced (both t < 1). Similarly, for the 9-s related condition, target response latencies were significantly faster than in the 9-s unrelated condition (ts (39) = 2.22, p < .05, SE = 19.96; ti (39) = 2.90, p < .01, SE = 13.87), but there was no difference in percentage of target errors produced (both t < 1). Thus, there was evidence in this experiment for facilitation with a 6-s interval between prime and target, and additional evidence for facilitation with a 9-s interval between prime and target. The results of Experiment 7 show that the facilitation effects for nonrhyming word body neighbors in PLDT emerge as soon as one intervening unrelated item has been presented between prime and target. We next tested whether this pattern of late-emerging priming would also apply in the case of rhyming word body neighbors. That is, we examined priming effects in PLDT for primes and targets that were similar in both phonology and orthography. These were the types of prime-target pairs used in Experiment 3, rhyming word body neighbors as in FOOT–SOOT. This experiment will establish whether facilitory priming effects are lateemerging in PLDT even when both phonology and orthography are shared by prime-target pairs.

the word SUIT. If these words are presented in PLDT participants could generate either the exception or the regularized pronunciation and both would support a ‘‘yes’’ response. With these types of words in PLDT it is not possible to know whether participants generated the appropriate phonological code. To avoid this problem, we revised the list of primes and targets used in Experiment 3, removing those for which the regularized pronunciation corresponds to a real word. To keep the stimulus list as large as possible we also added some new prime-target pairs, and some of these new pairs were higher in frequency than those used in Experiment 3. The resulting list of 22 prime-target word pairs included 15 from Experiment 3 and 7 new pairs. All primes and targets were monosyllabic words, 3–6 letters in length. For primes, mean printed frequency was 153.36 per million (Kucˇera & Francis, 1967). For targets, mean printed frequency was 93.68 per million. These stimuli are listed in Appendix E. Procedure The procedure was similar to that used for Experiment 5. Here, however, there were a limited number of prime-target pairs, so we presented only two priming conditions in Experiment 8a: 3-s related and 3-s unrelated, and two priming conditions in Experiment 8b: 27-s related and 27-s unrelated. Two word lists (11 prime-target pairs per list) were used in order that, across participants, each word pair appeared with equal frequency in each priming condition. Again, order of blocks was counterbalanced across participants.

Experiment 8 Results and discussion Method Participants There were 68 participants in Experiment 8a and 53 participants in Experiment 8b. Ten participants were excluded from analyses in Experiment 8a and five participants were excluded from analyses in Experiment 8b because they failed to meet the accuracy criterion (70% accuracy) for pseudohomophone trials in the PLDT. Apparatus The apparatus for Experiment 8 was the same as described for Experiment 5. Stimuli The prime-target stimuli for Experiment 8 would, ideally, have been the same rhyming prime-target stimuli used in Experiment 3. Some of the words used in the Experiment 3 rhyming pairs, however, were not suitable for PLDT. That is, for some exception words both the (correct) exception pronunciation and the (incorrect) regularized pronunciation sound like real words. For example, SOOTÕs regularized pronunciation sounds like

A target word trial was considered an error and excluded from the latency analysis if the target response latency was longer than 2500 ms or shorter than 250 ms (3.31% of trials in Experiment 8a and 2.56% of trials in Experiment 8b), or if there was an error on the prime (1.33% of trials in Experiment 8a and 1.14% of trials in Experiment 8b) or on the target (5.05% of trials in Experiment 8a and 5.21% of trials in Experiment 8b). Mean latencies and mean error percentages are presented in Table 8. The analyses for Experiment 8 involved, first, 2 (relatedness: related, unrelated) by 2 (interval: 3-s, 27-s) ANOVAs for response latencies and response errors. The interaction of relatedness and interval was significant in the latency analysis (Fs (1, 104) = 4.18, p < .05, MSE = 4863.24; Fi (1, 21) = 6.90, p < .05, MSE = 1324.69) but not in the error analysis (Fs < 1; Fi (1, 21) = 1.95, p = .18, MSE = 0.99). As illustrated in Table 8, the nature of this interaction was that the priming effect was substantially smaller in the 3-s condition than in the 27-s condition. The main effect of relatedness was significant in the latency analysis (Fs (1, 104) =

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331

Table 8 Mean PLDT target response latencies (ms) and target error percentages (standard deviations in parentheses) for Experiment 8 (exception primes, exception targets, e.g., BREAK–STEAK) Priming condition

Number of filler items between prime and target

RT

Error

Priming effect (RT)

95% CI for priming effect (RT)

Priming effect (error)

Lower Upper limit limit Experiment 8a 3-s unrelated 3-s related Filler words Pseudohomophones Pseudowords

0 0 n/a n/a n/a

702 681 664 959 1163

(301.09) 6.43 (24.54) (257.64) 6.90 (25.36) (222.84) 3.45 (18.25) (374.01) 11.83 (32.31) (449.63) 8.89 (28.47)

Experiment 8b 27-s unrelated 27-s related Filler words Pseudohomophones Pseudowords

8 8 n/a n/a n/a

772 714 684 936 1152

(317.16) 5.87 (23.53) (246.69) 8.14 (27.38) (214.18) 1.61 (12.59) (326.31) 12.82 (33.43) (416.86) 6.74 (25.07)

* **

+21

+58*,**

95% CI for priming effect (error) Lower Upper limit limit

4

+46

0.47

3.39

+2.46

+31

+90

2.27

5.64

+1.14

p < .05 by subjects. p < .05 by items.

17.95, p < .001, MSE = 4863.24; Fi (1, 21) = 9.21, p < .01, MSE = 5495.06) but not in the error analysis (Fs (1, 104) = 1.50, p = .22, MSE = 5.89; Fi (1, 21) = 1.76, p = .20, MSE = 2.42). Similarly, the main effect of interval was significant in the latency analysis (Fs (1, 104) = 4.42, p < .05, MSE = 33003.97; Fi (1, 21) = 11.56, p < .005, MSE = 7617.63) but not in the error analysis (both F < 1). Second, we conducted planned comparisons contrasting target response latencies and target error percentages in each related priming condition with the target response latencies and target error percentages in the matched unrelated priming condition. In Experiment 8a, for the 3-s related condition, target response latencies tended to be faster than in the 3-s unrelated condition but this difference did not reach significance (ts (57) = 1.66, p = .10, SE = 12.73; ti (21) = 1.72, p = .10, SE = 15.79), and there was no difference in percentage of target errors produced (both t < 1). In Experiment 8b, for the 27-s related condition, target response latencies were significantly faster than in the 27-s unrelated condition (ts (47) = 4.16, p < .001, SE = 14.51; ti (21) = 3.54, p < .005, SE = 19.94), but there was no significant difference in percentage of target errors produced (ts (47) = 1.30, p = .20, SE = 1.68; ti (21) = 1.36, p = .19, SE = 1.45). We considered whether there was sufficient power in this experiment to detect significant priming effects. The priming effect observed in the 27-s condition was associated with a CohenÕs d of .87. The power to detect an effect of this size in the 3-s condition, at one-tailed a = .05, was .99. Thus, we are confident that the power in this experiment was sufficient.

In this experiment there was a non-significant trend toward facilitation in the immediate priming condition and significantly more facilitation in the delayed (27-s) priming condition. The results of Experiments 5, 7, and 8 suggest that it is possible to observe long-term priming with word body neighbors in PLDT but, curiously, that it is not possible to observe immediate priming with the same stimuli. Given that we observed delayed facilitory priming for word pairs that share phonological rimes (as in BREAK-STEAK) and also for word pairs that do not share phonological rimes (as in PINT–TINT) we must conclude that phonological similarity is not critical to the observed effects. Instead, orthographic similarity seems to be important to these effects in PLDT. The purpose of the next experiment was to further explore the relationship of orthographic similarity to these delayed facilitation effects in PLDT. That is, we next considered whether these priming effects depend on overlapping word bodies or if the effects can be observed in PLDT for word pairs that have the same degree of orthographic overlap but do not share a body, as in TENT–TINT.

Experiment 9 Method Participants There were 56 participants in Experiment 9. Six participants were excluded from analyses because they failed to meet the accuracy criterion (70% accuracy) for pseudohomophone trials in the PLDT.

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interval in the latency analysis (Fs (1, 47) = 13.36, p < .001, MSE = 8542.93; Fi (1, 39) = 8.23, p < .01, MSE = 10698.82) but not in the error analysis (both F < 1). The nature of this main effect was, as in the previous experiments, that response latencies for targets tended to be slower in the 27-s interval conditions than in the 3-s interval conditions. The main effect of relatedness was not significant in the latency analysis (Fs (1, 47) = 1.43, p = .24, MSE = 8455.09; Fi (1, 39) = 1.92, p = .17, MSE = 6417.26) or in the error analysis (both F < 1). The interaction of interval and relatedness was not significant in the latency analysis (both F < 1) or in the error analysis (both F < 1). Second, we conducted planned comparisons contrasting target response latencies and target error percentages in each related priming condition with the target response latencies and target error percentages in the matched unrelated priming condition. For the 3s related condition, target response latencies were not significantly different from those in the 3-s unrelated condition (both t < 1), and there was similarly no difference in target errors produced in the 3-s related and unrelated conditions (both t < 1). For the 27-s related condition, target response latencies were not significantly different from those in the 27-s unrelated condition (both t < 1), and there was similarly no difference in target errors produced in the 27-s related and unrelated conditions (both t < 1). We considered whether there was sufficient power in this experiment to detect significant priming effects. The priming effect observed in the 27-s condition of Experiment 5 was associated with a CohenÕs d of .42. The power to detect an effect of this size in this experiment, at one-tailed a = .05, was .80. Thus, the power in this experiment was sufficient. In this experiment, we did not observe significant priming for TENT–TINT pairs at either the immediate

Apparatus The apparatus for Experiment 9 was the same as described for Experiment 5. Stimuli The prime-target stimuli for Experiment 9 were 40 pairs of orthographically similar words. Primes and targets differed in spelling by only one letter but did not share a word body (e.g., TENT–TINT). As much as possible, we tried to use the regular-inconsistent targets from the list of stimuli presented in Experiments 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, and 7. Seven of these targets, however, did not have orthographic neighbors that could be used as related primes and so had to be replaced. The selected primes included 26 regular-consistent words, 13 regular inconsistent words, and 1 exception word. All primes and targets were monosyllabic words, 3–5 letters in length. For primes, mean printed frequency was 44.05 per million (Kucˇera & Francis, 1967). For targets, mean printed frequency was 21.70 per million. These stimuli are listed in Appendix F. Procedure The procedure was the same as for Experiment 5. Results and discussion A target word trial was considered an error and excluded from the latency analysis if the target response latency was longer than 2500 ms or shorter than 250 ms (2.73% of trials), if there was an error on the prime (3.49% of trials), or on the target (3.44% of trials). Mean latencies and mean error percentages are presented in Table 9. The analyses for Experiment 9 involved, first, 2 (relatedness: related, unrelated) by 2 (interval: 3-s, 27s) ANOVAs for response latencies and response errors. This analysis produced a significant main effect of

Table 9 Mean PLDT target response latencies (ms) and target error percentages (standard deviations in parentheses) for Experiment 9 (orthographic neighbor word primes, word targets, e.g., TENT–TINT) Priming condition

Number of filler items between prime and target

RT

Error

Priming effect (RT)

95% CI for priming effect (RT)

Priming effect (error)

Lower Upper limit limit 3-s unrelated 3-s related 27-s unrelated 27-s related Filler words Pseudohomophones Pseudowords *p **p

< .05 by subjects. < .05 by items.

0 0 8 8 n/a n/a n/a

674 664 728 709 668 920 1161

(268.21) 4.17 (22.14) (221.34) 4.38 (20.54) (262.54) 4.17 (20.00) (227.17) 4.38 (20.48) (251.69) 1.77 (13.19) (343.48) 11.09 (31.41) (430.98) 9.16 (28.84)

95% CI for priming effect (error) Lower Upper limit limit

+10

23

+43

0.21

2.98

+2.57

+19

21

+65

0.21

2.71

+2.30

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or delayed priming intervals. Although the orthographic overlap for TENT–TINT pairs involves just as many letters as does the overlap for PINT–TINT pairs, the fact that the overlap is not in the word body means that no significant priming is produced. Hence, it seems that the delayed priming effects in PLDT are limited to prime-target pairs that share word bodies.

General discussion The purpose of this paper was to explore the processes involved in visual word recognition by examining priming effects from rhyming and nonrhyming word body neighbors. In particular, we examined how long these priming effects last and whether the time course of the effects is modulated by task demands. In Experiments 1–4, we presented rhyming and nonrhyming word body neighbors in naming tasks at prime-target intervals ranging from 3 to 51 s. Results showed that the process of naming an exception word prime (e.g., PINT) produced interference for naming a nonrhyming regular-inconsistent word target from the same word body neighborhood (e.g., TINT) when the prime and target were separated by up to 5 s, and that the effect did not survive presentation at longer intervals with intervening unrelated items. Similarly, results showed that when an exception word prime (e.g., FOOT) was named there was facilitation for naming a rhyming exception word target from the same word body neighborhood (e.g., SOOT). This rhyme priming was observed if the prime and target were separated by 3 s, but was not observed at longer intervals. We interpreted these effects to show that the

333

changes to the word recognition system produced by naming an exception word are quite short-lived, at least in terms of the extent to which they influence subsequent naming performance, and that these effects are consistent with an activation account (e.g., Taraban & McClelland, 1987). The naming results did not necessitate assumptions about prime processing causing longer term weight changes (e.g., Burt & Humphreys, 1993) since the time course of the effects was within the limits of what could reasonably be attributed to activation. The results of Experiments 5–9, however, suggested that activation was not the only influential process. In these latter experiments, we presented primes and targets in the PLDT, in order to test whether a more difficult phonological task produced evidence for longer-lasting priming effects. For nonrhyming word body neighbors (e.g., PINT–TINT), we found a pattern of priming effects in PLDT that was different from that produced in the naming tasks (see Fig. 1). In PLDT, nonrhyming word body neighbors produced facilitation effects at prime-target intervals of 6, 9, and 27 s. Here, the priming effects went in the opposite direction to those in the naming task and seemed to require presentation of intervening unrelated items. The results of Experiment 6 showed that orthographic similarity for primes and targets that are word body neighbors does not generate long term effects in a standard LDT. That is, consistent with a number of previous studies, our results showed that orthographic similarity does not necessarily produce long-term priming in visual word recognition tasks. For instance, in a lexical decision task, with formally similar pairs like MONKEY– MONK, Napps and Fowler (1987) found no evidence

Fig. 1. Priming effects (RTunrelated RTrelated) observed for nonrhyming word body neighbors (PINT–TINT pairs) across prime-target intervals in the naming task and in the phonological lexical decision task (PLDT).

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for significant priming with any kind of prime-target delay (one or more intervening trials between primes and targets). Feustel, Shiffrin, and Salasoo (1983) found a nonsignificant trend toward facilitory priming effects for word pairs that differed by one or two letters following at least 10 item delays in a variant of the progressive demasking task. Results of the present study showed that delayed priming effects were restricted to word body neighbors (in Experiment 9 priming was not observed for orthographically similar word pairs like TENT– TINT) and to the PLDT (effects were not observed in naming or in LDT). The results of Experiment 7 showed that these delayed facilitation effects for nonrhyming word body neighbors can be observed in PLDT as soon as one intervening trial has been presented between prime and target. In Experiment 8, with stimuli that were rhyming word body neighbors (e.g., BREAK– STEAK), we found that there was a trend toward facilitory priming in the immediate priming condition, and that there was substantially more facilitory priming in the delayed priming condition. Even when primes and targets shared both phonology and orthography, facilitation was attenuated in the immediate priming condition in this PLDT. The results of these later experiments are particularly interesting because they suggest that (a) counter to the predictions Bowers et al. (2002) derived from the Seidenberg and McClelland (1989) model, facilitation can be observed for nonrhyming word body neighbors in a word recognition task and (b) the facilitation effects we observed for primes and targets that were word body neighbors seemed to depend on presentation of at least one intervening trial between primes and targets. We argue here that both of these characteristics of our data can be explained by episodic memory processes. In several ways our longer term priming effects in PLDT are consistent with the overlapping operations account (e.g., Hughes & Whittlesea, 2003). Based on their experiments, Hughes and Whittlesea (2003) placed the following conditions on long-term semantic transfer: ‘‘it occurs (1) when the test task is reasonably difficult, so that the availability of specifically appropriate processing resources can make a difference in processing efficiency; (2) when those resources have been prepared in the prime phase, by performing either an identical or similar task; and (3) when the resources needed to perform the [target] task differ from trial to trial.’’ (pp. 405–406). Certainly, Hughes and Whittlesea offered their account as an explanation for long term semantic priming effects and in the present study we have focused on orthographic and phonological priming effects. Yet the same principles seem to apply. The PLDT requires orthographic and phonological processing, as well as an unusual familiarity assessment (for the phonological code generated from the visual string; McCann et al.,

1988; Taft, 1982). This is more elaborate processing than is typically required in a word recognition task (e.g., standard LDT). Our participants were required to perform the same task on primes and on targets. Importantly, as illustrated by the means in Tables 5, 7, 8, and 9, in PLDT participants were able to respond to some types of stimuli quite quickly (e.g., filler words) and to other types of stimuli much more slowly (e.g., nonwords). Since these stimuli were intermixed, there was variability, from trial to trial, in terms of which information was useful. For instance, with word targets participants could rely relatively more on their memory for the wordsÕ spelling in making the decisions, while for pseudohomophone targets memory for the wordsÕ spelling was an unreliable basis for responding. We are proposing that in our study, the resource created in the prime phase includes visual, phonological, and response-related processing for the prime word. This resource is then useful for target processing. The aspect of our data that seems inconsistent with the overlapping operations account is the fact that significant facilitory priming was never observed in the immediate priming conditions in PLDT, even when primes and targets were similar in terms of both phonology and orthography (Experiment 8). If prime processing created a memory trace that was useful to processing delayed targets why would it not also be useful to processing more immediate targets? We argue, next, that this pattern of priming effects is attributable to differences in trial sequences in the immediate and delayed priming conditions. As illustrated in Fig. 2, targets in the immediate priming conditions were, necessarily, always preceded by a word (the prime). In contrast, in the delayed priming conditions targets were very likely to be preceded by a pseudoword (because these comprised 50% of the trials in each PLDT experiment) or a pseudohomophone (because these comprised 25% of trials in each PLDT experiment). Lima and Huntsman (1997) demonstrated that sequential dependencies can be observed in LDT: responses to words are slower when a nonword is presented on the previous trial than when a word is presented on the previous trial. Indeed, in each of our LDT and PLDT experiments there was a significant main effect of interval: responses to both related and unrelated target words (these were preceded by a word trial) in the immediate priming conditions were faster than responses to related and unrelated target words in the delayed priming conditions (these were usually preceded by a nonword trial). As illustrated by the means in Table 8, this latency difference was observed only for the target words and not for filler words, pseudohomophones, or pseudowords. We suggest that this latency difference for target words in the immediate and delayed priming conditions is attributable to sequence effects. We suggest, further, that what is happening with target processing in the de-

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335

Fig. 2. Sample trial sequences for priming conditions in the phonological lexical decision task (PLDT). For illustrative purposes, primes and targets are presented in boldface.

layed priming conditions is like stimulus-cued task switching. There is an extensive task-switching literature demonstrating task switch cost: performance is slower after a task switch than it is after task repetition (see Monsell, 2003, for a review). In LDT or PLDT it may be more appropriate to think of this as largely response switch cost. Specifically, it is more difficult to judge that a stimulus is, or sounds like, a word if one has just judged that the previous stimulus is, or sounds like, a nonword. Given how difficult the PLDT is, and how different the response latencies are for different types of stimuli in this task, however, it may not be inappropriate to suggest that the task-set for pseudowords is different

from the task-set for words. Pseudoword stimuli may require more extensive processing, perhaps including more thorough phonological evaluation. The key point is our suggestion that this switch cost is the source of longer latencies for related and unrelated word targets in the delayed priming conditions in PDLT. Under conditions of switch cost, the prime processing episode may be more useful. More specifically, the reason that priming is more substantial in the delayed priming conditions is that here the resource created by the prime provides release from switch cost. Recently, Waszak, Hommel, and Allport (2003) argued that stimuli presented in a particular task become associated with

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that task. They proposed that for every stimulus that is processed, stimulus-response-event ‘‘bindings’’ are created (see also Logan, 1988; Logan & Compton, 1998). These are long lasting representations which can be retrieved when the same stimulus is encountered at some later point in time. Thus, stimuli can activate the response and task context with which they have been associated. Waszak et al. focused on the ways in which these episodic bindings can create interference in task switching: if a stimulus that is first encountered in one task is later presented in a different task, the stimulus-response-event binding for the initial encounter causes interference with performance on the later task. Importantly, this interference is observed on the first trial following a task switch because, it is argued, activation for the new task is weak. What we take from this is the possibility that the primeÕs binding could, by the same mechanism, create facilitation on the first trial following a task switch if the primeÕs response and task context were consistent with the response and task context needed for the target. This would explain why we observed facilitory priming in our delayed priming conditions: the targetÕs similarity to the prime in related conditions cued the primeÕs episode, which included information about the stimulus and associated response and task set, and mitigated some of the usual switch cost. In the immediate priming conditions, in contrast, the target was not presented on a ‘‘switch’’ trial; instead, it was preceded by the prime word. Although the primeÕs binding could also have been available under these conditions it did not facilitate processing as there was no cost (activation of competing response and task set) to offset. It is important to note that while presence of switch cost seems to be necessary in order to observe longer term priming effects for visually similar words, it is not sufficient. That is, even under switch cost we did not observe significant priming for words that were orthographic neighbors: TENT–TINT word pairs did not show significant facilitation in the delay conditions in PLDT, even though target latencies suggested that switch cost was present. Although orthographic overlap is the same, in terms of number of letters, for TENT– TINT and PINT–TINT pairs, the word body overlap of PINT–TINT pairs seems to provide more ready cuing of the primeÕs episode. It is perhaps not surprising, in a task that requires phonological coding, that the word body would be a salient feature. The account we have offered for our long term priming results is based on the notion that every stimulus encountered is encoded as an instance in episodic memory. Our results could not be explained in terms of weight changes in a connectionist model because, as outlined by Bowers et al. (2002), such models would predict that long term priming effects for nonrhyming word body neighbors like PINT–TINT

should be inhibitory. We could not find evidence for long term inhibitory priming in naming or in PLDT. In this way, our results are not consistent with those reported by Burt and Humphreys (1993) or by Seidenberg et al. (1984). There are a number of possible explanations for these discrepant results, and to test them all would require enough experiments to fill another paper. Here, we describe some of those potential explanations and suggest they could be tested in future research. In our naming experiments, almost all of our filler words were regular consistent words. In Burt and HumphreysÕ (1993) and Seidenberg et al.Õs naming experiments there were lower proportions of consistent words in the stimulus list: 57% consistent words in Burt and HumphreysÕ Experiment 1 and 33% consistent words in Seidenberg et al.Õs Experiment 2 vs. 85% in the naming experiments in the present paper. One possibility is that the high proportion of consistent words in the present study made the naming task especially easy, generally lowering participantsÕ response thresholds and rendering the task less sensitive to word body priming effects. One piece of evidence in support of this possibility is the fact that the priming effects for nonrhyming word body neighbors in the present naming experiments were never as large as those reported by Burt and Humphreys (where the procedure was closer to ours than in the Seidenberg et al. study), even in the immediate priming conditions. Burt and HumphreysÕ priming effects involving exception word primes and regular-inconsistent targets were 29 ms (immediate priming condition) and 17 ms (delayed priming condition), while our effects in comparable conditions were 18 ms (Experiment 1, 3-s condition) and 5 ms (Experiment 2b, 27-s condition). Perhaps our naming tasks were relatively easy and thus not sensitive to long term priming effects. Task difficulty cannot be the only issue here, though, as the PLDT is certainly a difficult task and we found no long-term interference effects in that task. Another possibility is that there are individual differences in phonological coding skills that contribute to the observed differences in these effects, and perhaps Burt and HumphreysÕ (1993) participants and Seidenberg et al.Õs (1984) participants had different levels of phonological coding skills than did our participants. Even within a population of skilled adult readers there are individual differences in phonological coding skills. Such skill differences have been shown to predict which participants show regularity effects in LDT (Unsworth & Pexman, 2003) and also which participants show masked phonological priming effects (Holyk & Pexman, 2004). It is perhaps not a stretch to suggest that these individual differences might also be related to delayed priming effects for word body neighbors.

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In any case, it seems that there are limited conditions under which long term interference effects for nonrhyming word body neighbors will be observed. Thus, while a single presentation of an exception word prime might create small weight changes in the visual word recognition system, the long term consequences of those weight changes may be very hard to detect. At the same time, presentation of an exception word will lead to encoding of the wordÕs characteristics and associated elements of the task and response (even in a task with 478 trials!). These episodic factors may influence later processing of similar words. Our results suggest that there are conditions under which the word body provides a sufficient cue to access memories for prior episodes. Certainly, the most novel aspect of this study is the demonstration of delayed facilitation effects for word body neighbors. The fact that this phenomenon can be explained in terms of the overlapping operations account suggests that this theory has broad generality. The principles of this account will need to be considered in any future priming studies.

Acknowledgments Gregory Holyk is now at the University of Illinois, Chicago. This work was supported in part by a grant to the first author, an undergraduate summer research award to the second author, and a postgraduate scholarship to the third author, all from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC). The authors thank Glen Bodner for helpful discussions about this work. Gratitude is extended to Jamie Pope and Ben Amsel for assistance with participant testing for Experiments 5 and 6.

Appendix A Exception word primes and regular-inconsistent word targets presented in Experiments 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, and 7 Exception word primes bowl breast bull bush choose crease brow deaf doll dose glove host limb phrase

Regular-inconsistent word targets Fowl Feast Gull Hush moose tease crow leaf toll rose stove frost climb chase

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Appendix A (continued) Exception word primes pint scarce sew shoe smooth spook squat steak swamp swan swap sweat tomb wad wand ward warn warp wart wash wasp wear wolf wool worm worse

Regular-inconsistent word targets tint farce dew toe tooth cook chat leak cramp clan clap cheat bomb sad sand lard barn harp mart mash gasp smear golf fool norm morse

Appendix B Exception word primes and exception word targets presented in Experiment 3 Exception word primes swear cue cough grease mood host womb plough swarm youth flood wash bear cute sweat foot rough squad doll break quart bull phase crow

Exception word targets wear hue trough cease brood ghost tomb bough warm couth blood squash pear mute threat soot tough wad moll steak wart full phrase blow

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Appendix C (continued)

Appendix C Filler items presented in Experiments 1–4 back bag bake bald bang bank bask bath beach bean beer belt bench bend bent bird black blade blame blank blend bloom boat bore born brag branch bribe brick hoop hop hope horn hurt jade jam job jock jog joke judge keen keg kick kiss knot lab lack lake lane large lark last law lawn lean lend less

brief brim bring brisk broke broom bulk cab cage cake calf calm cane cape cast cause chalk cheer chill choke chop claw clerk clip cloak clock clod clog club lie life lift limp line loan long lot luck lump lunch made male march mark marsh mask math maze meal mean meet melt mend mesh mess mild mile mine

cluck clump coal cold cope core corn crab craft cram cream creed creep crib crime crude crust dance dare dark dawn deck deep dent dice dig dip dirt dock mole moon nail name neck need nerve nest nice night pail pause pawn pea peach peel peg pelt pest pick pie pile pill pin pipe place play plea pledge

dog doom drab draft drag drape dream dress drift drop drum drunk duck dump dust dwell face fake fame fang faze feed feel fell fence fern field fig file pluck plug plum plump pole pond pore pout press price prime prod quake queen quit raft ranch rank rate raw reel rent rest rice rich rig right rind ripe

fin find fit flag flame flank flaw fleck fleet flip flirt float flog flop fluff foal foil frail fresh fringe frog game gaze gel girl glance glum goal gold rob rock role room rope rude rust sail sale salt sane sang scene scream screen seal seed seen sell send serve shaft shark sheep sheet shell shift shin ship

grab grace grade graft gram grape greed green greet grid grief grime grip grit grub gust hail half ham hang heel help hem hide hike hire hitch hold hole shy since sketch skirt skunk slab slack slick slid slip slob slop slug slum slump smile smog smoke smug snob snout soak sob sock sod sold song soon space

lick lid spice spin spit spleen spout spray sprite spur starch stem step stick stiff still stitch stock store

mob mode straw stream street stub stuck stuff swell swift swing switch tab tag tail take tale talk tame

plod plot tank tape task tea team tell tend tense tent test thank thief thin thorn thug tie tight

rise roam tile tilt time tire toast tong torn trace trade tray tree tribe trick trim trite trot trout

shop shot truck trunk trust turn twin vast verb vice volt vote wade wake west wet wheel white wide

spark spend wig wild wilt win wipe wire wise wish worn write wrong yam yelp yield zest

Appendix D Filler words, pseudohomophones, and pseudowords presented in Experiments 5–9 Filler words bake bench crab deck foal foil limp long ranch right song spend trip trout

brim face grid mesh rind spur wise

cake file grim night rude stem wish

calf flip half pest shy tile

coal float life pick sketch trim

Pseudohomophones ake ame boks bor chare cheaz crait crax dait ded flaim floar froot frunt greak grean heet hoaks keap kee laff laik lyte meel murge nale poak poal rade rait roal rong sayle scail sighn skool tair teech trax tutch

beek brane chyme creem deel fone gane greef hoal kerse leep meen nife poam rale rore seel slane teer tyle

blaid broak cleen crie dreem forse gloo gurl hurd klose lern ment noze poar rath ruff shair sleap thret vurse

bleek byke corse croo faik fot gole hait jale koast loil moad pade pye reer ryte sheald smoak thrue whyne

blote cair cort cryme feil fraim gread hed kat kroke lok moast perse pyne ritch sain shurt soyle tite yung

Pseudowords aimp alc bawn berge blaps blate

arbs berms blin

arp bilm blop

atts baip bists blag boam boik (continued on next page)

P.M. Pexman et al. / Journal of Memory and Language 53 (2005) 315–341

Appendix E (continued)

Appendix D (continued) boke brate ched cring dease doke fawk fleek fonk geel goom gug isks jike karch lanch lirt lound mests nace nins obbs pight plon prisk puth salk shate sirth soat tain thoan troar vist vunk woal yitch

bope breal chirth critch demp dold fean flob fraip geet gove heam jark jite kide lawl loak maft misp naff nint parge piln poad procks reen sart shet sleed spail talf thoo trocks vol waim soaled zake

borp bresh cleep danned derve draze feek flup froan gick graw hent jead jope klor lect loip malks morp nait nirl peam plale poon prore reeze seech shung smitch spee talp tirl tusts vope wame woil zeer

bort brize coom dape dift duft ferse foast galm glab grawl herge jeek jound kly leem loke mang mudge nawl noop pelp plarn prate prum rirk seef sife snarn spow tamn toin twie vugs weam yalk zole

bove broop crant darm doan dush fie foat ganned glap grize hib jends juck kunk ling lond meef mun neam nurl phop plask preeze pulk ruds serm silm soam stean thipe tomp vawn vulk werve yerp

brab broze creef daste dode elbs fipe fode ged gleat grole huth jick kalc lale linp lonk meep murch nerm oab pife plave prem pumb rups sern sirk soan tage thoaled toop veam vump wilk yight

Appendix E Exception word primes and exception word targets presented in Experiment 8 Exception word primes cough crow host womb swarm youth flood wash cute squad break mood spread grease there lose

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Exception word targets trough blow ghost tomb warm couth blood squash mute wad steak brood dread crease where whose

Exception word primes bull glove quart phase bush breath

Exception word targets full shove wart phrase push death

Appendix F Orthographic neighbor word primes and word targets presented in Experiment 9 Orthographic neighbor word primes chose lord hash tent gill boast mess clip mare loaf foal tie coat gulf rise boob den sod cork store burn leap front chest tell boat crimp mouse hare speak gash broth force foil mesh tense claw send crew farm

Word targets chase lard hush tint gull beast moss clap mart leaf fool toe chat golf rose bomb dew sad cook stove barn leak frost cheat toll boot cramp moose harp spear gasp booth farce fowl mash tease clan sand crow form

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