Does pizza prime coin? Perceptual priming in lexical decision and pronunciation

In six experiments we investigated priming for perceptually related word pairs (i.e., words that refer to objects with the same shape such as pizza-coin), trying to replicate earlier findings by Schreuder, Flores d'Arcais and Glazenborg (1984) while avoiding some of the methodological problems that were present in that study. Under standard conditions no perceptual priming was obtained. However, in all experiments priming for associated pairs was found. Only after activation tasks that focused on perceptual features was priming for perceptually related word pairs was found in pronunciation. Perceptual priming was also obtained in lexical decision after activation tasks, but only when strong associates were not presented in the experiment. The results show that priming for perceptually related word pairs is not a general finding. A well known finding, often reported in the literature, is that a response to a word (e.g., bread) is faster and more accurate if the target word is presented in the context of a related word, the prime (e.g., butter), than if it is presented in the context of an unrelated prime (e.g., chair). This associative priming effect was first obtained by Meyer and Schvaneveldt (1971) and has been replicated many times in both pronunciatio