An electrophysiological study of cross-modal repetition priming

Few studies have focused on language processing across modalities. Two experiments examined between-modality interactions across three prime-target intervals (0, 200, and 800 ms) in a cross-modal repetition priming paradigm. Event-related potentials were recorded to auditory targets following visual primes (Experiment 1) or visual targets following auditory primes (Experiment 2). In Experiment 1 robust repetition effects were found for auditory targets as early as 100 ms, and continued through the N400 epoch. Moreover, these visual-auditory repetition effects were large across all three prime-target intervals although they onset 200 ms later at the shortest interval. In Experiment 2 repetition effects to visual targets started later (at 200 ms), but also offset relatively later (approximately 1000 ms). These auditory-visual repetition effects were both smaller overall and absent for the two shortest prime-target intervals during the typical N400 window.