Modality effects in word identification

An experiment was designed to investigate the locus of persistence of information about presentation modality for verbal stimuli. Twenty-four Ss were presented with a continuous series of 672 letter sequences for word/nonword categorization. The sequences were divided equally between words and nonwords, and each item was presented twice in the series, either in the same or in a different modality. Repetition facilitation, the advantage resulting from a second presentation, was greatest in the intramodality conditions for both words (+re responses) and nonwords (-ve responses). Facilitation in these conditions declined from 170 msec at Lag 0 (4 sec) to approximately 40 msec at Lag 63. Facilitation was reduced in the cross-modality condition for words and was absent from the cross-modality condition for nonwords. The modality-specific component of the repetition effect found in the word/nonword categorization paradigm may be attributed to persistence in the nonlexical, as distinct from lexical, component of the word categorization process.