Rime and syllabic effects in phonological priming between French spoken words

Phonological priming between spoken words was examined using CVCVC bisyllabic pseudoword primes and word or pseudoword targets. The influence of different types of overlap was compared, prime and target sharing the coda, the rime or the final syllable. The task was target shadowing. Two priming conditions were used, the auditory targets being preceded by auditory primes in unimodal and by visual primes in crossmodal situation. Priming effects were obtained under unimodal stimulation only. A strong facilitation occurred with syllable overlap while a smaller facilitation was found with rime overlap. Coda overlap produced no effect. The absence of effect in crossmodal stimulation argues that the final overlap effects occur before the semantic system. Concerning the underlying units, a comparison of our results with those obtained from CCVC monosyllables with overlaps in phonemic length similar to those we used, suggests that both rime and syllabic units per se are involved in the effects of final similarity between spoken words.