Do spelling variations affect associative and phonological priming by pseudohomophones?

Abstract

A nonword prime can sound like a target word or one of the target's associates, and it can look like either without sounding like either. These pseudohomophones and pseudohomographs can vary in the number of letters shared with the target or its associate. In an associative priming experiment in which targets were named and prime duration was 125 msec within a mask-prime-mask-target sequence, pseudohomophones primed and pseudohomographs did not, with the pseudoassociative priming being only weakly affected by spelling differences. In three further experiments, prime homophony and homography were defined in respect to the target. Prime durations were 125 and 21 msec within a mask-prime-mask-target sequence and 57 msec within a mask-prime-target sequence. The superior priming by pseudohomophones was relatively insensitive to spelling. Results are discussed in terms of the phonological coherence hypothesis and the roles for orthographic information implied by the hypothesis.