Form priming

Form priming is used to investigate the structure of phonological representations in the mental lexicon, as well as the nature of processes operating on such representations during word recognition. Two variants of the form priming paradigm (direct and mediated form priming) are described and results obtained with each are summarised. With both variants, participants are presented with a target, to which a response is required, preceded by a prime. With direct form priming, the prime and target are related in form (e.g. plank-blank). With mediated priming, the target is semantically related to a word that is form-related to the prime (e.g. plank-white).