SEMANTIC, REPETITION AND RIME PRIMING BETWEEN SPOKEN WORDS - BEHAVIORAL AND ELECTROPHYSIOLOGICAL EVIDENCE

Semantic, phonological and repetition priming for auditorily presented words were examined, using both behavioral reaction times (RTs) and e lectrophysiological event-related potentials (ERPs) measures. On criti cal trials, a word prime was followed by a word target that was semant ically or phonologically related (rime) or not related (control) to th e prime. Pairs of word-pseudoword items served as fillers. Participant s were asked to respond to word targets in the RT experiment and to ps eudowords in the ERP experiment. In each experiment stimuli were prese nted once and then repeated in the very same way. RTs were found to be fastest for semantic, intermediate for rime and slowest for control t argets; large repetition effects occurred for all targets. ERPs result s showed that both semantic and phonological priming influenced the sa me component, namely the N400, whose amplitude was smallest to semanti c, intermediate to rime and largest to control targets; repetition eff ects were only found for semantic trials. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B. V. All rights reserved.