Perre, L. 1, 3 , Midgley, K. J. 2, 3 & Ziegler, J. C. 3
1 Unité de Recherche en Sciences Cognitives et Affectives, Université Nord de France, France
2 Neurocognition Lab, Tufts University, Medford, MA, USA
3 Laboratoire de Psychologie Cognitive, CNRS and Aix-Marseille Université, France
The present experiment examined the contribution of orthography in spoken word processing using a primed auditory lexical decision task. In a first condition, primes and targets only shared onset phonology but not orthography (e.g., DEBT-DEAF). In a second condition, primes and targets shared both onset phonology and orthography (e.g., DEAD-DEAF). In a third condition, primes and targets were unrelated. Behavioural data showed two distinct response patterns among participants. For one group of participants, the phonological overlap between primes and targets lead to RT facilitation without any effects of orthography. For the other group, phonological overlap between primes and targets lead to RT inhibition in combination with a facilitatory effect of orthographic overlap. In line with the phonological priming literature, the phonological inhibition found when primes and targets share the onset is interpreted to reflect competition between lexical candidates during the recognition process. In this context, orthography facilitation is taken to reflect the involvement of orthographic information to reduce the cohort of lexical candidates. In sum, these results show that orthography could be involved in auditory word recognition and could help the recognition process.