Lexical Stress Effects in Italian Spoken Word Recognition

Two cross-modal priming experiments tested whether Italian listeners rely on lexical stress information in spoken word recognition. In both experiments participants performed a lexical decision task on visual targets; however in the trials where there was a relation between prime and target, the relation was one of identity in Experiment 1, whereas it was a semantic association in Experiment 2. In Experiment 1, the match condition (e.g., the prime ['go.mi] from gomito, elbow, for the target GOMITO), produced facilitation relative to the control condition, and the mismatch condition (e.g., the prime [go.’mi] from gomitolo, clew, for the target GOMITO) produced inhibition. In Experiment 2, responses were faster in the related (e.g, the prime ['go.mi] from gomito, elbow, for the target BRACCIO, arm) than in the control condition. This, however, did not differ from the unrelated condition (e.g, [go.’mi] from gomitolo, clew, for the target BRACCIO, arm). The methodological and theoretical implications of the results are discussed