in recent work using a single-word shadowing task, Slowiaczek and Hamb
urger (1992) reported facilitation in response times for auditory targ
ets preceded by auditory but not visual primes that shared one initial
phoneme, and interference for targets preceded by auditory or visual
primes that shared three initial phonemes. Because interference occurr
ed with word primes but not with nonword primes, it was interpreted as
resulting from competition among phonologically similar lexical repre
sentations. In the present investigation, whether the single-word shad
owing task does indeed involve accessing lexical representations was e
xamined in two semantic priming experiments. Subjects repeated aloud a
uditorily presented target words that were preceded by unrelated, sema
ntically related, or identical primes. Semantic priming was obtained w
hether the auditory target words were preceded by auditorily or visual
ly presented primes. The results support the position that like the na
ming of visually presented words, the single-word shadowing task invol
ves accessing lexical memory. As a result, this task provides an appro
priate means of examining the organization of lexical memory and audit
ory word recognition processes.