Is alphabet biasing in bialphabetical word perception automatic and prelexical?

Phonologically ambiguous Serbo-Croatian words are identified more slowly and erroneously than their phonologically unique counterparts. Five experiments addressed the reduction of these ambiguity effects when Roman (Cyrillic) targets are preceded by consonants unique to the Roman (Cyrillic) alphabet. Alphabet-specific nonword contexts were presented briefly with masking. With forward masking, performance was better when the phonologically ambiguous target words and their preceding nonword contexts were alphabetically congruent. Similarly, where backward masked contexts acted themselves as backward masks for the target stimuli, identification was highest when the context masks were in the same alphabet as the targets. Results were discussed in terms of automatic, prelexical processes within a network model of visual word recognition in Serbo-Croatian.