WHEN DO NONWORDS ACTIVATE SEMANTICS - IMPLICATIONS FOR MODELS OF VISUAL WORD RECOGNITION

Three lexical decision experiments examined the conditions in which no nwords activate semantics. Lexical decisions to targets (e.g., CAT) we re faster when preceded by semantically related nonword primes (e.g., DEG derived from Dec) when the prime was brief and masked; this nonwor d priming effect was eliminated when the prime was presented for a lon ger duration. These results are discussed in the context of both paral lel distributed processing models and the idea that the occurrence of nonword priming depends upon subjects being unable to verify the ident ity of the prime.