SEMANTIC PRIMING IN A SINGLE-WORD SHADOWING TASK

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.