How to drastically reduce priming in word stem completion and still present the words

This paper describes a series of experiments in which we demonstrated that "dysphonemic" word stems, which are likely not pronounced in isolation as t hey are within a word (e.g., MUS in wMUSHROOM or LEG in LEGEND), showed les s priming than did "phonemic stems" (e.g., MUS in MUSTARD Or LEG in LEGACY) . Furthermore, words with either dysphonemic or phonemic three-letter stems gave rise to equivalent levels of priming when test cues were four-letter stems (LEGE) or word fragments (L_G_ND). Moreover, the difference between p honemic and dysphonemic stems persisted when nonpresented completion rates were matched. A final cued-recall experiment revealed that performance was greater for phonemic stems than for dysphonemic stems and that this differe nce was greater for older participants than for younger ones. These results are not readily accounted for by extant theoretical approaches and point t o important methodological issues regarding stem completion.