Visual lexical access is initially phonological: 1. Evidence from associative priming by words, homophones, and pseudohomophones.

In 9 experiments, a target word (e.g., frog) was named following an associate (TOAD), or a word (e.g., TOWED) or nonword (e.g., TODE) homophonic with the associate. At brief (e.g., 50 ms) stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs), the 3 primes produced equal associative priming. At a long SOA (250 ms), priming by TOAD was matched by TODE but not by TOWED. Equal priming at brief SOAs by the 3 primes and no priming by orthographic controls (TOLD, TORD) suggests that lexical access is initially phonological. TOWED priming less than TODE at SOA = 250 ms suggests that phonologically activated representations whose input orthography does not match the addressed spelling (available only for words) are eventually suppressed. Phonological constraints on lexical access precede and set the stage for orthographic constraints.