Orthographic and phonological neighborhood effects within a priming context

Abstract

Two experiments were completed investigating orthographic neighborhood size in the context of phonological neighborhood size and priming, at various SOAs. Experiment 1 exhibited that words from larger phonological neighborhoods were processed more quickly than those that are not. Also, targets were responded to more quickly at long SOAs and being from a large orthographic neighborhood was facilitative at the 500 ms SOA. There was a three-way interaction between phonological and orthographic neighborhood size and relatedness qualified by two two-way interactions between orthography and phonology and phonology and relatedness. Experiment 2 employed a manipulation of the prime with the same stimuli as Experiment 1. Experiment 2 also exhibited main effects of priming and of SOA. There was also a significant three-way interaction between orthographic and phonological neighborhood size and relatedness, whereby, in the related condition, words from both a small orthographic and a small phonological neighborhood were processed more quickly.