A functional disconnection between spoken and visual word recognition: evidence from unconscious priming

The goal of the present study is to assess whether there is an automatic and obligatory activation of the phonological lexicon upon the presentation of a written word under unconscious processing conditions. We use a cross-modal version of the masked repetition priming procedure introduced by Forster and Davis (Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition 10 (1984) 680) which consists of priming a spoken word by its written equivalent under masked conditions. These trials are randomly mixed with within-modal (visual-visual) repetition priming control trials. Our results show that cross-modal priming effects are absent unless primes are consciously perceived, as assessed by d' scores obtained with a letter/pseudo discrimination task. In contrast, priming effects within the written modality are observed under conscious as well as unconscious processing conditions. We conclude that the systems underlying written and spoken word processing are, respectively, autonomous and connected only under conscious conditions.