Picture naming: identical priming and word frequency interact

In picture naming, the effects of identical or repetition priming and language frequency are most probably localized at the same processing level: the retrieval of the phonological word form of the picture's name. This conclusion is supported by the observation that repetition priming is larger for pictures with low-frequency names than for pictures with high-frequency names. However, in two recent studies in which the prime word was masked, identical priming and word frequency combined additively. The cause of this unexpected finding was investigated in four experiments. Experiments 1 and 2 showed that the use of the masked-priming technique is not the underlying factor. Instead, Experiments 3 and 4 revealed that the discrepancy most probably resulted from the use of unrelated prime words as the baseline from which identical priming was measured. When neutral (non word) primes were used as the baseline, word frequency and identical priming showed the expected interaction. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.