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Abstract A series of experiments assessed masked priming for letters and words that are visually similar (SIM) and dissimilar (DIS) in upper- and lower-case formats. For letters, robust DIS priming was obtained in a naming task, but this priming did not extend to a variety of non-naming tasks. For words, robust DIS priming was obtained in both naming and non-naming tasks. SIM letter and word priming extended to all tasks, but the effects were generally small for letters. Based on the restricted set of conditions for DIS letter priming, we suggest that this priming is mediated by phonological-articulatory processes, and based on the generality of DIS word priming, we argue that abstract orthographic codes mediate these effects. Consistent with this conclusion, we report priming between homophones (for both letters and words) in a naming task, but little word homophone priming in a lexical decision task.
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