Looks aren't everything: pseudohomophones prime words but nonwords do not.

After examining literature that deals with phonological and orthographic effects associated with pseudohomophones, the current effort deviates from the norm by using fewer pseudohomophones (20%) and extending the lags between primes and targets (M = 8). Word and pseudohomophone primes were found to facilitate lexical decision response latencies to word targets. Response latencies to word targets were not influenced by nonword primes, however. The presence of pseudohomophone effects was demonstrated by longer response latencies and higher error rates for pseudohomophones (e.g., DREEM) that were equated in orthography to nonword controls (e.g., DROAM). Despite the frequency effect observed for base words, the pseudohomophones did not exhibit an effect of base word frequency. The results suggest that phonological codes exert an influence on lexical representation but are not frequency sensitive.