ABSTRACT

In the present chapter I argue that masked and long-term word priming are mediated by common representations, but reflect different processes operating on these codes. That is, I argue that masked priming for written words is largely mediated by the temporary activation of orthographic and to some extent phonological and semantic knowledge (with the relative contribution of these representations depending on the task), whereas long-term priming is the by-product of learning that modifies this knowledge in adaptive ways. And as a consequence, masked and long-term priming provide important and complimentary tools to study visual word processing: masked priming providing an online measure of the time course of orthographic-phonological-semantic activation, and long-term priming providing a measure of word learning.