ABSTRACT
THE NATURE OF MASKED ONSET PRIMING EFFECTS IN NAMING: A REVIEW Naming latency is faster when a target is preceded by a prime that shares just the initial letter with the target (e.g., save-SINK) relative to when if the target is preceded by an all-letter-different prime (e.g., farm-SINK). Forster and Davis (1991) were the first to report this finding, and termed it the masked onset priming effect. Like all masked priming effects discussed in this book, because the prime is presented briefly (usually 50 to 60 ms) and is back-ward-masked by the target, subjects generally are not aware of the identity of the prime. Therefore, it is a useful tool for studying the processes involved in reading that is relatively free of task-specific strategies to enhance performance.
