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The present study investigates the origins of the masked onset priming effect (MOPE). There are two alternative interpretations that account for most of the evidence reported on the MOPE, so far. The speech planning account (SP) identifies the locus of the MOPE in the preparation of the speech response. In contrast, the dual-route theory proposes that the effect arises as a result of the processing of the prime by the nonlexical route. In a series of masked onset priming word naming experiments we test the validity of these accounts by manipulating the primes’ frequency, their lexical status, and pronounceability. We found consistent MOPEs of similar magnitude with high- and low-frequency prime words as well as with pronounceable nonwords. Contrarily, when primes consisted of unpronounceable consonantal strings the effect disappeared, suggesting that pronounceability of the prime is a prerequisite for the emergence of the MOPE. These results are in accordance with the predictions of the SP account. The pattern of effects obtained in the present study further defines the origins of the MOPE.

The appropriate selection of both pictorial and linguistic experimental stimuli requires a previous languagespecific standardization process of the materials across different variables. Considering that such normative data have not yet been collected for Modern Greek, in this study normative data for the color version of the Snodgrass and Vanderwart picture set (Rossion & Pourtois, 2004) were collected from 330 native Greek adults. Participants named the pictures (providing name agreement ratings) and rated them for visual complexity and age of acquisition. The obtained measures represent a useful tool for further research on Greek language processing and constitute the first picture normative study for this language. The picture norms from this study and previous ones may be downloaded from brm.psychonomic-journals.org/content/supplemental.

This study was designed to explore whether the human visual system has different degrees of tolerance to character position changes for letter strings, digit strings, and symbol strings. An explicit perceptual matching task was used (same–different judgment), and participants' electrophysiological activity was recorded. Materials included trials in which the referent stimulus and the target stimulus were identical or differed either by two character replacements or by transposing two characters. Behavioral results showed clear differences in the magnitude of the transposed-character effect for letters as compared with digit and symbol strings. Electrophysiological data confirmed this observation, showing an N2 character transposition effect that was only present for letter strings. An earlier N1 transposition effect was also found for letters but was absent for symbols and digits, whereas a later P3 effect was found for all types of string. These results provide evidence for a position coding mechanism that is specific to letter strings, that was most prominent in an epoch between 200 and 325 msec, and that operates in addition to more general-purpose position coding mechanisms.

In order to overcome limitations associated with script incompatibilities Greek users of the Internet have developed Greeklish, a transliterated version of Modern Greek using Roman characters. The representational status of this artificial writing system was examined in two masked priming lexical decision experiments using Greeklish primes with different degrees of graphemic overlap with their corresponding Greek targets. Results suggested that Greeklish primes were effectively processed and transliterated to their Greek counterparts. Larger masked priming effects were found as a function of increased prime-target graphemic overlap. Interestingly, these Greeklish priming effects were in all cases of smaller magnitude than the pure Greek identity priming effect. Our findings revealed that extensive experience with a recently developed artificial writing system leads to its non-effortful processing, but that even for highly experienced Greeklish users the Greeklish-to-Greek conversion is modulated by the graphemic properties of the input stimulus.

Non-cognate masked translation priming lexical decision studies with unbalanced bilinguals suggest that masked translation priming effects are asymmetric as a function of the translation direction (significant effects only in the dominant [L1] to nondominant [L2] language translation direction). However, in contrast to the predictions of most current accounts of masked translation priming effects, bidirectional effects have recently been reported with a group of low proficient bilinguals Duyck & Warlop 2009 (Experimental Psychology 56:173–179). In a series of masked translation priming lexical decision experiments we examined whether the same pattern of effects would emerge with late and low proficient Greek (L1)–Spanish (L2) bilinguals. Contrary to the results obtained by Duyck and Warlop, and in line with the results found in most studies in the masked priming literature, significant translation priming effects emerged only when the bilinguals performed the task with L1 primes and L2 targets. The existence of the masked translation priming asymmetry with low proficient bilinguals suggests that cross-linguistic automatic lexico-semantic links may be established very early in the process of L2 acquisition. These findings could help to define models of bilingualism that consider L2 proficiency level to be a determining factor.