Delayed commitment in spoken word recognition: Evidence from cross-modal priming

Using the cross-modal priming paradigm, we attempted to determine whether semantic representations for word-final morphemes embedded in multisyllabic words (e.g., /lak/ in /hεmlak/) are independently activated in memory. That is, we attempted to determine whether the auditory prime, /hεmlak/, would facilitate lexical decision times to the visual target, KEY, even when the recognition point for /hεmlak/ occurred prior to the end of the word, which should ensure deactivation of all lexical candidates. In the first experiment, a gating task was used in order to ensure that the multisyllabic words could be identified prior to their offsets. In the second experiment, lexical decision times for visually presented targets following spoken monosyllabic primes (e.g., /lak/-KEY) were compared with reaction times for the same visual targets following multisyllabic pairs (/hεmlak/-KEY). Significant priming was found for both the monosyllabic and the multisyllabic conditions. The results support a recognition strategy that initiates lexical access at strong syllables (Cutler & Norris, 1988) and operates according to a principle of delayed commitment (Marr, 1982).