Inhibitory priming in auditory word recognition: Is it really the product of response biases?

Abstract

Phonological priming studies have revealed slower responses to auditory target words when they are preceded by a prime that begins with the initial phonemes. However the interpretation of such an inhibitory priming effect has not been consensual. Whereas some authors have interpreted this effect as reflecting lexical processes, Pitt and Shoaf (2002) have argued that this effect comes from participants' surprise when they encounter the first related trials. To avoid such a response bias, we included related prime-target pairs in the training session and, like in Pitt and Shoaf's study, compared the magnitude of the inhibitory priming effect to the same items occurring at the beginning and at the end of the experiment. No change in the magnitude of the inhibitory priming effect was found over the course of the experiment. Moreover, an additional analysis showed that the inhibitory priming effect correlates with the neighborhood density of the target words. These findings suggest that the effect is lexical in nature and does not reflect purely strategic processes.