Abstract
•Conscious reading facilitates unconscious word processing in a constrained manner.•Suppressed words can interact with the neural network activated by related primes.•Morphological and semantic information interacts in early Chinese word processing.
Whether invisible words can be processed up to the semantic or conceptual level is still controversial. We postulate that the consciously accessible context may play an important role in determining whether or how semantics can be extracted unconsciously. In the present two-phased priming study, we analyzed the effects of orthographic and semantic relatedness-to-target of primes on breaking off interocular suppression for Chinese compound words (two characters) presented under continuous flash suppression (CFS). It was found that both semantic and orthographic priming positively affected access to conscious awareness while the two types of priming cancelled each other out when combined. These results indicate that conscious reading experience can facilitate unconscious semantic processing, and this facilitation may be compromised by the competition of semantics and orthography for residual cognitive resources. The findings are discussed in light of both the pre-activation hypothesis and feedback hypothesis in the visual system coupled with the unique morphemic structure of Chinese compound words. We support the claim that the neural networks already activated in processing visible words can be utilized to modulate conscious access to invisible words in interocular suppression.