Cross-modal masked repetition and semantic priming in auditory lexical decision

The underlying processes and mechanisms supporting the recognition of visually and auditorily presented words have received considerable attention in the literature. To a lesser extent, the interplay between visual and spoken lexical representations has also been investigated using cross-modal lexical processing paradigms, yielding evidence that auditorily presented words influence visual word recognition, and vice versa. The present study extends this work by examining and comparing the relative sizes of cross-modal repetition (cat-CAT) and semantic (dog-CAT) priming in auditory lexical decision, using heavily masked, briefly presented visual primes and a common set of auditory targets. Even when conscious awareness of the prime was minimized, reliable cross-modal repetition and semantic priming was observed. More critically, repetition priming was stronger than semantic priming, consistent with the idea that multiple pathways connect the two modalities. Implications of the findings for the bidirectional interactive activation model (Grainger & Ferrand, 1994) are discussed.