The Role of Phonological Priming in Backward Priming Effects of Chinese Four-Character Words

The backward priming effect is found in the masked lexical decision tasks deploying Chinese four-character words as targets and the backward-presented words as primes. To explore whether phonology plays a role in this backward priming effect, we conducted two experiments using the masked priming lexical decision tasks. Thirty-two and sixty-three native Chinese speakers participated in the two experiments. Experiment 1 was designed to investigate the phonological priming in backward conditions and to ensure the exclusion of phonology in Experiment 1, the primes were presented forward in Experiment 2. The results showed that no significant phonological priming effect was found whether the primes were backward-presented or forward-presented. Therefore, it can be concluded that phonological priming did not contribute to the backward priming effect in lexical decision tasks.