Semantic and repetition priming with homophones

Previous research attempting to determine the nature of the internal lexicon has focused on priming and inhibition effects. The semantic priming effect and the repetition effect have been extensively studied both as independent effects and together. Each of these effects has been determined to be reliable, and substantial support for the statistical independence of these two effects has been mustered. A less often studied phenomenon is phonological priming. This advantage for identifying words that sound like previous words has found by many authors, but many others have failed to find reliable effects.; The current study investigated semantic priming, repetition priming, and phonological priming using heterographic homonyms (homophones) as stimuli in a lexical decision task. As in previous research, reliable semantic priming and repetition effects were found. In addition, the statistical additivity of these two effects was replicated using homophones as stimuli.; Using homophones, a reliable phonological priming effect was found when 10 to 16 intervening trials were used. This effect was also statistically independent of semantic priming indicating the independence of the mechanisms responsible for semantic priming and phonological priming.; The magnitude of the phonological priming effect was also significantly less than the magnitude of the repetition effect. This difference in effect magnitude was taken to indicate that the repetition of phonological information is not a primary contributor to the repetition effect.