In defense of abstractionist theories of repetition priming and word identification

There is a great deal of interest in characterizing the representations and processes that support visual word priming and written word identification more generally. On one view, these phenomena are supported by abstract ort hographic representations that map together Visually dissimilar exemplars o f letters and words (e.g., the letters A/a map onto a common abstract lette r code a*). On a second view, orthographic codes consist in a collection of episodic representations of words that interact in such a way that it some times looks as if there are abstract codes. Tenpenny (1995) contrasted thes e general approaches and concluded by endorsing the episodic account, argui ng that no evidence demands that we posit abstract orthographic representat ions. This review reconsiders the evidence and argues that a variety of pri ming and nonpriming research strongly supports the conclusion that abstract orthographic codes exist and support priming and word identification. On t his account, episodic representations are represented separately from abstr act orthographic knowledge and contribute minimally to these functions.