Syllable effects in beginning and intermediate European-Portuguese readers: Evidence from a sandwich masked go/no-go lexical decision task

Investigating the Role of Response Codes in Masked Priming Lexical Decision Tasks: The Case of Repeated Presentations

The masked priming technique is considered a gold standard among experimental psychologists who specialize in the field of visual word recognition. Typically, this method entails a comparison between two or more critical conditions (e.g., the target word MOUSE being preceded by either the identity prime mouse or the unrelated prime fence). It is noteworthy that, unlike other masked priming tasks, prior experiments examining the properties of unrelated primes (e.g., their frequency as words [high or low] or their legality as nonwords [orthographically legal or illegal]) do not have an impact on the processing of the target item. However, two lexical decision studies reported faster responses to target words when the unrelated prime is a word rather than a nonword (i.e., a response congruency effect). One possible explanation for this discrepancy is a difference in methodology, as these two studies are the only ones to have used repeated presentation of stimuli, which could lead to the creation of an episodic memory trace that amplifies response congruency effects. To examine this hypothesis, we used a set of materials that did not show any congruency effect in a previous experiment with unique presentations, except that here we included repeated presentations. Results showed a response congruency effect, with participants responding faster to word targets when they were preceded by an unrelated word prime as opposed to an unrelated nonword prime. These findings suggest that the activation of response codes in masked priming is contingent upon the nature of cognitive resources required for processing the target stimuli.

Consonant and vowel transposition effects during reading development: A study on Italian children and adults

Recently, Colombo, Spinelli, and Lupker, using a masked transposed letter (TL) priming paradigm, investigated whether consonant/vowel (CV) status is important early in orthographic processing. In four experiments with Italian and English adults, they found equivalent TL priming effects for CC, CV, and VC transpositions. Here, we investigated that question with younger readers (aged 7-10) and adults, as well as whether masked TL priming effects might have a phonological basis. That is, because young children are likely to use phonological recoding in reading, the question was whether they would show TL priming that is affected by CV status. In Experiment 1, target words were preceded by primes in which two letters (either CV, VC, or CC) were transposed versus substituted (SL). We found significant TL priming effects, with an increasing developmental trend but, again, no letter type by priming interaction. In Experiment 2, the transpositions/substitutions involved only pairs of vowels with those vowels having either diphthong or hiatus status. The difference between these two types of vowel clusters is only phonological; thus, the question was, "Would TL priming interact with this factor?" TL priming was again found with an increasing trend with age, but there was no vowel cluster by priming interaction. There was, however, an overall vowel cluster effect (slower responding to words with hiatuses) which decreased with age. The results suggest that TL priming only taps the orthographic level, and that CV status only becomes important at a later phonological level.

Unveiling the boost in the sandwich priming technique

The masked priming technique (which compares #####-house-HOUSE vs. #####-fight-HOUSE) is the gold-standard tool to examine the initial moments of word processing. Lupker and Davis showed that adding a pre-prime identical to the target produced greater priming effects in the sandwich technique (which compares #####-HOUSE-house-HOUSE vs #####-HOUSE-fight-HOUSE). While there is consensus that the sandwich technique magnifies the size of priming effects relative to the standard procedure, the mechanisms underlying this boost are not well understood (i.e., does it reflect quantitative or qualitative changes?). To fully characterise the sandwich technique, we compared the sandwich and standard techniques by examining the response times (RTs) and their distributional features (delta plots; conditional-accuracy functions), comparing identity versus unrelated primes. The results showed that the locus of the boost in the sandwich technique was two-fold: faster responses in the identity condition (via a shift in the RT distributions) and slower responses in the unrelated condition. We discuss the theoretical and methodological implications of these findings.