Masked phonological priming effects in English - Center for Reading ...

K. Rastle, M. Brysbaert / Cognitive Psychology 53 (2006) 97–145 1256.4. Simulation 3We found it surprising that the DRC model tested in Simulation 2 yielded so littleimprovement in the model’s ability to capture phonological priming effects on lexicaldecision. To understand better the contribution that assembled phonology makes tothe information from which visual lexical decisions are made in the DRC model (giventhe standard parameter values controlling the direct route to the orthographic lexicon),we conducted a third simulation in which we disabled the nonlexicalphonological assembly procedure entirely. We did not, of course, expect to observea pattern resembling a phonological priming effect under these conditions. Our purposewas simply to compare performance under these conditions with performancein Simulations 1 and 2.6.4.1. Parameter setSimulation 3 altered the standard set of parameters for lexical decision (i.e., those usedin Simulation 1) by reducing the GPC excitation parameter from 0.055 to 0.00.6.4.2. ResultsWe carried out the analyses of total orthographic activation and of the activationof target orthographic units in the same manner as was reported in Simulation 1.Results revealed greater total activation produced by graphemic controls than by phonologicalprimes, although this difference was not significant at 25 cycles(M = .0156, t(111) = 1.47), 50 cycles (M = .1087, t(111) = 1.47), or 100 cycles(M = .1576, t(111) = 1.43). Further, results showed no difference in the extent towhich phonological primes and graphemic controls activated target orthographic unitsat 25 cycles (M = .0002, t < 1), 50 cycles (M = .0003, t < 1), or 100 cycles(M = .0119, t < 1).6.4.3. DiscussionAs expected, Simulation 3 revealed no evidence for a pattern of activation consistentwith a phonological priming effect. We examined the cases in which phonologicalprimes yielded more activation in target orthographic units than didgraphemic controls: At 25 cycles, 10/112 items yielded this pattern; at 50 cycles,13/112 items yielded this pattern; and at 100 cycles, 11/112 items yielded this pattern.As in Simulations 1 and 2, these items were neighbors of their target words,and had fewer neighbors (and neighbors of lower frequency) than their matchedgraphemic controls.By comparing Simulations 1–3, we can observe that given the standard parameters controllingthe strength of the direct route from print to the orthographic lexicon, the assemblyof phonological information makes only a miniscule contribution to the activation oforthographic lexical entries. The number of cases in which phonological primes yieldedmore activation in target orthographic units than did graphemic controls was only marginallygreater in the model in which phonology was assembled rapidly and in a near-parallelmanner than in the model in which phonology was not assembled at all. Instead, whatdetermined the activation of target orthographic units was largely the orthographic characteristicsof primes (e.g., their orthographic overlap with targets their neighborhoodstructures).