MEDIATED SEMANTIC-PHONOLOGICAL PRIMING - CALLING DISTANT RELATIVES

Many interactive activation theories state that activation of words en tails concomitant activation of semantically related lexical items and thus indirectly of phonological relatives of the semantic relatives. That is, some degree of mediated semantic-phonological activation shou ld occur. In contrast, discrete-stage accounts of lexical activation p redict no activation as a result of semantic-phonological mediation. I n addition to providing a test of a key differentiator of these theori es, semantic-phonological mediation provides a cleaner definition of m ediation than the more frequently studied semantic-semantic case. It a lso presents a methodological challenge because semantic facilitation and phonological inhibition could work against one another. In six pri ming experiments, we show (a) one-step semantic (pen-ink) facilitation and phonological or form-related (ink-inch) inhibition, (b) evidence that the form-related effect is underlyingly facilitatory, and (c) evi dence of a small facilitatory effect of semantic-phonological mediatio n (pen-inch). Although it appears to be near the limit of the sensitiv ity of the naming task, the effect provides important support for inte ractive activation theories. (C) 1997 Academic Press.