Activation of segments, not syllables, during phonological encoding in speech production

Two experiments are reported that tested whether syllables can be primed in English speech production using a (masked) priming paradigm. In Experiment 1, we presented masked syllable primes for 45 ms. In Experiment 2, primes were presented for either 45 ms or 105 ms under unmasked conditions. In both experiments, we tested three different SOAs, namely - 200 ms, 0 ms, and + 200 ms. Both under masked and under unmasked conditions phonological priming effects were obtained. However, no evidence for a syllabic priming effect was found. Instead, at SOAs - 200 ms and 0 ms, priming effects increased when the segmental overlap between prime and target was increased. This outcome supports a segmental overlap account but contradicts the syllable priming hypothesis. The theoretical implications of the results for current theories of phonological encoding are discussed.