Masked priming of word and picture naming: The role of syllabic units

A series of word, nonword, and picture naming experiments is reported using the masked priming paradigm with very brief prime exposures. In Experiment 1 naming latencies for both bi- and trisyllabic words were faster when preceded by primes that corresponded to the first syllable than when preceded by primes that contained one letter more or less than the first syllable. Experiment 2 showed syllable priming effects with bisyllabic nonword targets in the naming task, Experiment 3 failed to observe such syllable priming effects with word and nonword targets in the lexical decision task. Finally, Experiment 4 replicated the syllabic priming effects using pictures as targets. These results suggest that the syllable represents a functional unit of output phonology in French. (C) 1996 Academic Press, Inc.