Form-priming of Language: Inhibition and Facilitation

In various priming paradigms, segmental overlap (i.e. phonological or orthographical overlap) between the target and prime word has been demonstrated to facilitate picture naming. But features extending over several segments are rarely controlled for in stimulus selection. Some attention has been paid to such suprasegmental features, but inconsistent findings have been obtained. The presented studies took up this issue and the combination of word stress and vowel quality was investigated in a picture-word task. In the pictureword interference task, pictures are named while attempting to ignore simultaneously presented distractors words. A series of three experiments presented Dutch target and distractor words of three possible suprasegmental patterns while controlling for a manifold of variables. Distractor words inhibited picture naming for picture targets of a fully related suprasegmental pattern. A fourth experiment obtained a facilitatory main effect of segmental overlap, whereas the suprasegmental effect dissipated when suprasegmental features are manipulated in the presence of segmental overlap. This observation clarifies results of Experiment 3 in which segmental overlap was an artefact of the manipulation of suprasegmental overlap. Inhibitory form priming has been observed in other picture naming paradigms and variants of the picture-word task. An account was extrapolated from these instances, as an attempt to cover both facilitatory, inhibitory, and null effects of suprasegmental overlap.