Short-term implicit memory: Visual, auditory, and cross-modality priming

Short-term implicit memory was examined for mixed auditory (A) and visual ( V) stimuli. In lexical decision, words and nonwords were repeated at lags o f 0, 1, 3, and 6 intervening trials, in four prime-target combinations (VV, VA, AV,AA). Same-modality repetition priming showed a lag x lexicality inte raction for visual stimuli (nonwords decayed faster), but not for auditory stimuli (longer lasting smooth decay for both words and nonwords). These mo dality differences suggest that short-term priming has a perceptual locus, with the phonological lexicon maintaining stimuli active longer than the or thographic lexicon and treating pseudowords as potential words. We interpre t these differences in terms of the different memory needs of speech recogn ition and text reading. Weak cross-modality short-term priming was present for words and nonwords, indicating recoding between perceptual forms.