Rime and syllabic effects in phonological priming between French spoken words.

Phonological priming between spoken words was examined

using CVCVC bisyllabic pseudoword primes and word or

pseudoword targets. The influence of different types of

overlap was compared, prime and target sharing the coda,

the rime or the final syllable. The task was target

shadowing. Two priming conditions were used, the auditory

targets being preceded by auditory primes in unimodal and

by visual primes in crossmodal situation. Priming effects

were obtained under unimodal stimulation only. A strong

facilitation occurred with syllable overlap while a smaller

facilitation was found with rime overlap. Coda overlap

produced no effect. The absence of effect in crossmodal

stimulation argues that the final overlap effects occur before the semantic system. Concerning the underlying units, a comparison of our results with those obtained from CCVC monosyllables with overlaps in phonemic length similar to those we used, suggests that both rime and syllabic units per se are involved in the effects of final similarity between spoken words.