Neurophysiologid Manifestations of Phonological Processing: Latency Variation of a Negative ERP Component Timelocked to Phonological Mismatch

Two experiments examined phonological priming effects on reaction times, error rates, and event-related brain potential (ERP) measures in an auditory lexical decision task. In Experiment 1 related prime-target pairs rhymed, and in Experiment 2 they alliterated (i.e., shared the consonantal onset and vowel). Event-related potentials were recorded in a delayed response task. Reaction times and error rates were obtained both for the delayed and an immediate response task. The behavioral data o f Experiment 1 provided evidence for phonological facilitation o f word, but not of nonword decisions. The brain potentials were more negative to unrelated than to rhyming word-word pairs between 450 and 700 rnsec after target onset. This negative