An ERP Investigation of Fast Phonological Priming Kristi Kiyonaga1, Jonathan Grainger2, Maya Misra3

1
An ERP Investigation of Fast Phonological
PrimingKristi Kiyonaga1, Jonathan Grainger2,
Maya Misra3 Phillip J. Holcomb1Tufts
University, Medford, MA1 CNRS, Aix/Marseille2
Penn State University3
Experiment 1
Introduction Although it is widely acknowledge
d that phonological information influences silent
reading, the speed with which such influences
arise is still an issue. The answer to this
question is important, since it provides strong
constraints on architectures that describe how
orthographic and phonological information
interact during word recognition. One such
architecture, the bimodal interactive-activation
model (Grainger Ferrand, 1994 Figure 1)
predicts fast influences of phonology that other
influential models do not predict (Coltheart et
al., 2001 see Brysbaert Rastle, 2006). Prior
behavioral results obtained with the masked
priming paradigm and briefly presented prime
stimuli all point to fast-acting phonology, in
line with the bimodal models prediction (e.g.,
Ferrand Grainger, 1992 Ziegler et al., 2000).
The present study used event-related potentia
ls to examine the time-course of pseudohomophone
priming using a masked priming paradigm.
Participants monitored visual target words for
occasional animal names, and event-related
potentials (ERPs) were recorded to non-animal
critical items. In Experiment 1 half of the
critical trials had target words that were
preceded by masked pseudohomophones that either
sounded like the target (e.g., brane-BRAIN) or
sounded like another word (e.g., phoan-BRAIN)
while the other half of the trials had target
words that were preceded by masked words that
either were identical to the target (e.g.,
brain-BRAIN) or were a different word (e.g.,
phone-BRAIN). Experiment 2 used the same design,
but the unrelated primes were matched to the
pseudohomophones in terms of the number and the
position of shared letters (e.g., bralo-BRAIN).
Repeated and Unrelated Target Words after
pseudohomophone primes
Repeated and Unrelated Target Words after word
primes
2
Findings Target words following word (Exp 1) a
nd pseudo-homophone primes (Exp 1 2) resulted
in significantly smaller amplitudes compared with
targets following control primes in two
negative-going ERP components peaking at
approximately 250 ms post-target onset (N250) and
400 ms post-target onset (N400). That this
pattern emerged even when the primes were
carefully matched on orthographic features (Exp
2) provides one of the most convincing
demonstrations to date of the importance of
pre-lexical phonology during silent reading, and
helps resolve the long-standing debate on this
critical issue. These results are in line wit
h the predictions of the bimodal
interactive-activation model (Grainger Ferrand,
1994 Figure 1), as well as the recent attempt
to map ERP components onto the different
component processes in this model (Holcomb
Grainger, in press Kiyonaga et al., in press).
In this scheme the N250 is hypothesized to
reflect sub-lexical processing (both orthographic
and phonological) whereas the N400 reflects the
mapping of whole-word form representations onto
their respective meanings. Pseudo-homophone
primes affect both of these processes since they
activate sub-lexical and whole-word phonological
representations that are compatible with upcoming
target words.

• Method
• Experiment 1 - 20 right handed native English
  speaking participants, 32 Channel EEG (Figure 2)
  
• 260 trials of a semantic categorization task (see
  Figure 3 top)
  
• 200 critical trials
• 60 probe trials each requiring a button press
• 2 critical conditions each with 2 trial types
  repeated and unrepeated
  
• Repeated and unrelated target word following a
  word prime (e.g., brain-BRAIN phone-BRAIN)
  
• Pseudo-repeated and unrelated target word
  following a pseudohomophone prime (e.g.,
  brane-BRAIN phoan-BRAIN)
  
• Experiment 2 - 24 new right handed native English
  speaking participants
  
• 260 trials of a semantic categorization task
  (see Figure 3 bottom)
  
• 100 critical trials
• 100 filler trials
• 60 probe trials each requiring a button press
• 1 critical condition with 2 trial types pseudo
  repeated, (brane-BRAIN), and ortho-matched
  unrelated (e.g., bralo-BRAIN)
  
• Note that ortho-matched unrelated prime matched
  with pseudo repeated prime on number and position
  of shared letters with the target

Figure 1 -BIAM
Experiment 2
Repeated and Unrelated Target Words after
pseudohomophone primes
Figure 3 - Trial Schematics
References Coltheart, M., Rastle, K., Perry, C.
, Langdon, R., Ziegler, J. C. (2001). DRC A
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En ERP investigation using masked repetition
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in press. Rastle, K., Brysbaert, M. (2006). M
asked Phonological Priming Effects in English
Are they Real? Do they Matter? Cognitive
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Figure 2 Electrode Montage
Exp 1
Exp 2
This research was supported by HD25889 HD043251
the CNRS