6533b7d1fe1ef96bd125d811

RESEARCH PRODUCT

Masked priming effects are modulated by expertise in the script.

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In a recent study using a masked priming same–different matching task, García-Orza, Perea, and Muñoz (2010) found a transposition priming effect for letter strings, digit strings, and symbol strings, but not for strings of pseudoletters (i.e., [Formula: see text] produced similar response times to the control pair [Formula: see text]). They argued that the mechanism responsible for position coding in masked priming is not operative with those “objects” whose identity cannot be attained rapidly. To assess this hypothesis, Experiment 1 examined masked priming effects in Arabic for native speakers of Arabic, whereas participants in Experiments 2 and 3 were lower intermediate learners of Arabic and readers with no knowledge of Arabic, respectively. Results showed a masked priming effect only for readers who are familiar with the Arabic script. Furthermore, transposed-letter priming in native speakers of Arabic only occurred when the order of the root letters was kept intact. In Experiments 3–7, we examined why masked repetition priming is absent for readers who are unfamiliar with the Arabic script. We discuss the implications of these findings for models of visual-word recognition.