Behavioral and electrophysiological study of phonological priming between bisyllabic spoken words

Phonological priming between bisyllabic (CV.CVC) spoken items was examined using both behavioral (reaction times, RTs) and electrophysiological (event -related potentials, ERPs) measures. Word and pseudoword targets were prece ded by pseudoword primes. Different types of final phonological overlap bet ween prime and target were compared. Critical pairs shared the last syllabl e, the rime or the coda, while unrelated pairs were used as controls. Parti cipants performed a target shadowing task in Experiment 1 and a delayed lex ical decision task in Experiment 2. RTs were measured in the first experime nt and ERPs were recorded in the second experiment. The RT experiment nas c arried out under two presentation conditions. In Condition 1 both primes an d targets were presented auditorily, while in Condition 2 the primes were p resented visually and the targets auditorily. Priming effects were found in the unimodal condition only. RTs were fastest for syllable overlap, interm ediate for rime overlap, and slowest for coda overlap and controls that did not differ from one another. ERPs were recorded under unimodal auditory pr esentation. ERP results showed that the amplitude of the auditory N400 comp onent was smallest for syllable overlap, intermediate for rime overlap, and largest for coda overlap and controls that did not differ from one another . In both experiments, the priming effects were larger for word than for ps eudoword targets. These results are best explained by the combined influenc es of nonlexical and lexical processes, and a comparison of the reported ef fects with those found in monosyllables suggests the involvement of rime an d syllable representations.