Orthographic, phonological, and articulatory contributions to masked letter and word priming

A series of experiments assessed masked priming for letters and words that are visually similar (SIM) and dissimilar (DIS) in upper- and lowercase for mats. For letters, robust DIS priming was obtained in a naming task but thi s priming did not extend to a variety of non-naming tasks. For words, robus t DIS priming was obtained in both naming and non-naming tasks. SIM letter and word priming extended to all tasks, but the effects were generally smal l for letters. The restricted set of conditions for DIS letter priming sugg ests that this priming is mediated by phonological-articulatory processes, and the generality of DIS word priming argues that abstract orthographic co des mediate these effects. Consistent with this conclusion, priming between homophones (for both letters and words) was found in a naming task, but li ttle word homophone priming was obtained in a lexical decision task.