Rapid naming is affected by association but not by syntax.

Three experiments are reported that focus on the grammatical and associative relationship between a single word context and a to-be-named target in the SerboCroatian language. Unlike studies using the English language, word class need not be violated in order to obtain grammatical incongruency: all word pairs, therefore, can be semantically plausible. Experiment 1 contrasted naming with lexical decision using associative and grammatical priming, a replication of Seidenberg, Waters, Sanders, and Langer ([984). With associative priming, both lexical decision and naming were facilitated significantly, but with grammatical priming, only lexical decision was affected significantly. Heeding observations of West and Stanovich (1986), Experiment 2 used stimuli known to produce a robust grammatical congruency effect on lexical decision (130 ms) and a procedure designed to slow naming latencies. Still no grammatical congruency effect for naming was obtained. Finally, because Experiment 1, which used a row of X's as the neutral context, showed an associative priming effect on naming pseudowords, Experiment 3 used a neutral context that was linguistic. An associative priming effect was found for words but not pseudowords. Results were discussed in terms of preand postlexical loci of contextual effects.