According to La Heij, Puerta-Melguizo, van Oostrum and Starreveld (1999), identical priming and word frequency are genrally assumed to affect the same processing level in picture naming: the phonological level. Therefore, identical priming and word frequency are usually expected to interact. However, Ferrand and colleagues (1994, 1998) have found that, in picture naming, word frequency and identical priming combined additively. La Heij et al. (1999) have argued that this result was due to the use of unrelated words as the baseline to assess identical priming effects. A masked form priming picture naming experiment was conducted in which three types of primes were used (identical, unrelated, neutral) and word frequency was manipulated. Word frequency and identical priming should interact in picture naming when neutral primes are used as the baseline. The findings therefore challenge the putative claim that word frequency and identical priming should interact in picture naming when neutral primes are used as the baseline.
Do identical priming and word frequency truly interact in picture naming when a neutral baseline is used?
