title: When nonwords activate semantics better than words.
abstract: We conducted a strong test of the idea that visual word processing and the activation of a printed word's meaning proceeds at a rate scaled by the temporal evolution of a unique and stable phonological code. Using the lexical decision task, and readers fluent in the two alphabets of Serbo-Croatian, we compared the priming of a target word such as automat by the semantically related word ROBOT and by the nonword ROBOT. Whereas the Serbo-Croatian word ROBOT can support two phonological codes, /robot/ and /rovot/, the nonword ROBOT composed by illegally mixing Roman and Cyrillic letters can support only the phonological code /robot/, that corresponding to the word whose meaning is related to automat's. At a prime duration of 35 ms, the lexical decision on the target automat was facilitated by ROBOT but not by ROBOT. At a prime duration of 125 ms, the word ROBOT was the more effective prime. One consequence of phonology's leading role in visual word recognition is that a nonword can sometimes activate a given word's meaning better than the word itself.
authors.affiliation: University of Connecticut, Storrs, USA. lukatela@uconnvm.uconn.edu
authors.forename: G
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Lukatela
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Carello
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Savić
authors.forename: Z
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Urosević
authors.forename: M T
authors.initials: MT
authors.lastname: Turvey
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D010700:Phonetics; D012660:Semantics; D013060:Speech / Q000502:physiology; D014825:Vocabulary