| Abstract: | Two experiments with 294 undergraduates studied the relationship between lower level code availability and top–down contextual processing in word recognition. The utility of context information was measured by a word boundary task, which required Ss to rapidly separate words from a uniformly spaced array of letters. Context was manipulated in terms of coherent vs random passage organization and the presence or absence of prior thematic framework information. Low-level code availability was impaired in a reversed orthographic condition as indicated by reduced performance rates compared with normal presentations. Results show that the increment in performance resulting from coherent organization relative to the random passage was equivalent in both normal and reversed orthographic forms. It appears that framework information can operate as an additional knowledge source to increase performance. (11 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved) |
