Modality-specific effects of immediate word repetition: electrophysiological evidence

Event-related potentials (ERPs) elicited by visually presented words were employed to investigate whether the neural correlates of repetition within- and across-modality differ when repetition is immediate, and the influence of explicit memory maximal. Relative to the ERPs elicited by first presentations, ERPs elicited by immediate, within-modality repetitions began to differ from approximately 200 ms post-stimulus onset. ERP repetition effects elicited by across-modality repetition did not onset until approximately 150 ms later. Within- and across-modality repetition effects were also dissociable neuroanatomically, exhibiting different scalp distributions. The findings support the proposal that the modality-sensitive component of visual word repetition effects operates at an early, pre-semantic processing stage.