The Effect of Repetition and Stimulus Type on Reaction Time in the Recognition of Persian Words

The present study examined the effect of phonological auditory priming on the recognition of Persian monosyllabic words. Priming refers to a process in which the presentation of a preceding stimulus which can accelerate or facilitate the processing of a subsequent stimulus. In phonological processing, a prime may activate part of the phonetic or phonological structure of the target word, thereby influencing the speed of access to lexical representations. To investigate this relationship, three types of primes were used: rhyme primes, which activate the final portion of the target word; phoneme-transposition primes, in which the final phonemes of a word or nonword are rearranged; and a control condition in which the prime and target shared no phonemes. Fifteen adult native speakers of Persian participated in the study. Each participant completed an auditory lexical recognition task consisting of 240 trials, during which reaction times and response accuracy were recorded as dependent variables. The independent variables were prime type and stimulus repetition. The results revealed a strong and significant effect of repetition on reaction time; repeated items were processed more rapidly, indicating facilitated lexical access resulting from repeated exposure. Prime type also had a significant effect: rhyme primes led to shorter reaction times, whereas phoneme-transposition primes did not differ significantly from the control condition. The interaction between repetition and prime type was not significant, suggesting that repetition effects and phonological facilitation operate independently. Overall, the findings demonstrate that the mechanisms underlying lexical access in Persian are comparable to those reported for other languages.