Priming effects to words are reduced when modality
changes from study to test. This change was examined here
using behavioral and electrophysiological measures of priming.
During the study, half of the words were presented visually
and half auditorally; during a subsequent lexical decision
test, all words were presented visually. Lexical decisions
were faster for within- than cross-modality repetitions.
In contrast, modality influenced recognition only for low-frequency
words. During lexical decision, event-related brain potentials
were more positive to studied than unstudied words (200–500
ms). A larger and shorter duration effect was observed
for within- than cross-modality repetitions (300–400
ms). This latter effect is viewed as an electrophysiological
index of modality-specific processing associated with priming.
Results suggest that multiple events—both modality-specific
and modality-nonspecific—underlie perceptual priming
phenomena.