Doubts about the Usefulness of Masked Priming for Tracking Lexical Consolidation: Only Short-Term Effects of Exposure and No Help from Sleep.

Qiao and Forster (2013) showed that repeated exposure to novel neighbors (e.g., "banara") leads to the disappearance of facilitation in masked priming when trained items are used as primes-a between-subject result taken as a sign that newly learned primes had become competitors of their targets (e.g., "BANANA"). Here, we assess the long-term nature of this effect and the possible involvement of sleep in its emergence by teaching participants two sets of neighbors (e.g., "alarchy" for "anarchy") 12 hr apart and testing them immediately after learning Set 2 and again after another 12 hr. Crucially, half the participants (PM group) learn Set 1 at 20:00, while the other half (AM group) learn Set 1 at 08:00. Training does reduce the amount of orthographic facilitation (i.e., 23 vs. 32 ms). However, this effect is short-lived and gone within 12 hr, whether participants sleep after learning or not. Also, at odds with the "prime-lexicality" account, this effect is driven by unrelated targets becoming faster, rather than related targets becoming slower, as a result of neighbor exposure. In contrast, a Reicher-Wheeler task, pitting the neighbor against its base word (e.g., "alarchy/anarchy"), shows reliable signs of sleep-associated consolidation: The rate of neighbor-consistent responses (e.g., choosing "l" over "n"), made stronger through exposure, remains unchanged during subsequent wakefulness, but is enhanced after sleep. Given that the reduction in masked orthographic facilitation following neighbor exposure is clearly a short-term effect, our results call into question Qiao and Forster's conclusions and the usefulness of masked priming for tracking lexical consolidation. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).