Fig 2. Behavioral paradigm.

Each trial consisted of a fixation cross, a prime (single kana character), a blank interval and a target picture. Participants either orally named the targets or wrote down their names according to prespecified task instructions. Four different types of primes were used to manipulate the degree of phonological overlap between primes and the first morae of target names. That is, each prime could represent either (1) a mora identical to the first mora, or (2) a different mora sharing only a consonant with the first mora, or (3) a different mora sharing only a vowel with the first mora, or (4) a different mora sharing neither consonants nor vowels with the first mora (see Methods).