Effects of masked repetition priming and orthographic neighbourhood in visual recognition of words

The role of orthographic neighbourhood (neighorhood size and neighborhood frequency) in visual-word recognition was analyzed using the masked repetition priming paradigim. Specifically, we varied stimulus-onset asynchrony (33, 50, and 67 msec.) and type of prime (identical, unrelated, unprimed) in a lexical-decision task. Analyses show additive effects of repetition and stimulus-onset asynchrony. Further, the unrelated condition overestimated the repetition effects relative to an unprimed condition. Facilitatory effects of neighborhood size and inhibitory effects of neighborhood frequency were also found. The results are interpreted in terms of current models of visual-word recognition.