title: An ERP investigation of orthographic priming with superset primes.
abstract: Prime stimuli formed by inserting unrelated letters in a given target word (called "superset" primes) provide a means to modify the relative positions of the letters shared by prime and target. Here we examined the time-course of superset priming effects in an ERP study using the sandwich-priming paradigm. We compared the effects of superset primes formed by the insertion of unrelated letters (e.g., maurkdet-MARKET), or by the insertion of hyphens (e.g., ma-rk-et-MARKET), with identity priming (e.g., market-MARKET), all measured relative to unrelated control primes. Behavioral data revealed significantly greater priming in the hyphen-insert condition compared with the letter-insert condition. In the ERP signal, letter-insert priming emerged later than hyphen-insert priming and produced a reversed priming effect in the N400 time-window compared with the more typical N400 priming effects seen for both hyphen-insert priming and identity priming. The different pattern of priming effects seen for letter-insert primes and hyphen-insert primes suggests that compared with identity priming, letter superset priming reflects the joint influence of: (1) a disruption in letter position information, and (2) an inhibitory influence of mismatching letters.
authors.affiliation: CNRS and Aix-Marseille University, Marseille, France; Brain and Language Research Institute, Aix-Marseille University, Marseille, France. Electronic address: maria.ktori@univ-amu.fr.
authors.forename: Maria
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Ktori
authors.affiliation: San Diego State University, San Diego, CA, USA.
authors.forename: Katherine
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Midgley
authors.affiliation: San Diego State University, San Diego, CA, USA; Tufts University, Medford, MA, USA.
authors.forename: Phillip J
authors.initials: PJ
authors.lastname: Holcomb
authors.affiliation: CNRS and Aix-Marseille University, Marseille, France; Brain and Language Research Institute, Aix-Marseille University, Marseille, France.
authors.forename: Jonathan
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Grainger
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D004569:Electroencephalography; D005071:Evoked Potentials / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual / Q000502:physiology*; D012815:Signal Processing, Computer-Assisted; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: ERPs; Letter position encoding; Mismatching-letter interference; Orthographic processing; Superset priming