What Do Letter Migration Errors Reveal About Letter Position Coding in Visual Word Recognition?

Dividing attention across multiple words occasionally results in misidentifications whereby letters apparently migrate between words. Previous studies have found that letter migrations preserve within-word letter position, which has been interpreted as support for position-specific letter coding. To investigate this issue, the authors used word pairs like STEP and SOAP, in which a letter in 1 word could migrate to an adjacent letter in another word to form an illusory word (STOP). Three experiments show that both same-position and adjacent-position letter migrations can occur, as well as migrations that cross 2 letter positions. These results argue against position-specific letter coding schemes used in many computational models of reading, and they provide support for coding schemes based on relative rather than absolute letter position. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of generation on indirect measures of memory.

Subjects either read words (CHIMP) or generated words ("a small ape—C') during the study phase of three experiments. The effects of these encoding tasks on performance in two indirect, priming tests—word completion and word identification—were observed. The word completion test is a version of word stem completion in which subjects are shown the initial four letters of a five-letter word (e.g., CHIM_: CHIMP, CHIME) and are asked to add one letter to produce the first word that comes to mind. In word identification, subjects are shown a word briefly and are asked to identify it. Systematic comparisons of the two tests within single experiments showed that generation, either to semantic cues or to orthographic cues, had different effects on performance in the two tests: Word identification performance was lower for words generated rather than read, whereas word completion performance for words generated was indistinguishable from performance for words read. These results suggest that performance in different indirect tests depends on the processing of different types of information. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Direct Assessments of the Processing Time Hypothesis for the Missing-Letter Effect.

When participants search for a target letter while reading, they make more omissions if the target letter is embedded in frequently used words or in the most frequent meaning of a polysemic word. According to the processing time hypothesis, this occurs because familiar words and meanings are identified faster, leaving less time for letter identification. Contrary to the predictions of the processing time hypothesis, with a rapid serial visual presentation procedure, participants were slower at detecting target letters for more frequent words or the most frequent meaning of a word (Experiments 1 and 2) or at detecting the word itself instead of a target letter (Experiment 3). In Experiments 4 and 5, participants self-initiated the presentation of each word, and the same pattern of results was observed as in Experiments 1 and 3. Positive correlations were also found between omission rate and response latencies. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Syllable and letter knowledge in early Korean Hangul reading.

This study examined the development of Korean consonant–vowel (CV) syllable identification, consonant and vowel letter knowledge, and their relationships to phonological awareness and the reading of regular Hangul words among Korean kindergartners as a 6-month longitudinal study. Results showed that Korean children identified CV syllables better than consonant and vowel letters. In regression analyses, CV syllable identification at Time 1 strongly contributed to Hangul word recognition concurrently over and above letter knowledge, as well as longitudinally after controlling for letter knowledge and reading at Time 1. However, letter knowledge did not predict Hangul reading once CV syllable identification was controlled. In addition, CV syllable knowledge facilitated subsequent letter knowledge and phoneme onset and coda awareness. The results, in general, shed light on the salient roles of syllables in the early literacy development of Korean. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

German Capitalization of Nouns and the Detection of Letters in Continuous Text.

The missing-letter effect refers to the phenomenon that letters are more difficult to detect in common function words (such as the) than in content words. Assuming that the missing-letter effect is diagnostic of the extraction of text structure, we exploited a special feature of German - the convention to capitalize the initial letter of nouns. Given the great flexibility of word order in German, it was proposed that this convention might help readers specify the structure of the sentence. Therefore orthographic variations that violate the capitalization rules should disrupt structure extraction and should result in a reduced missing-letter effect. The results indicated that: 1) capitalization of function words eliminated the missing-letter effect, but not at the beginning of a sentence; 2) A missing-letter effect occurred when the capitalization of the first letter was correct, but was followed by type-case alternation, and also when the size of the initial letters was relatively large for function words, but relatively small for content words. The results were discussed with respect to the possible contributions of visual familiarity, structural role, and processing time to the missing-letter effect, taking into account that a capitalized initial letter conveys significant information about the word class for German readers. Thus, the present results indicate that readers take advantage not only of function words but of any other information (here the capitalization of nouns) that helps to extract the structure of a sentence. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Are individual or consecutive letters the unit affected by repetition blindness?

When 2 similar words (e.g., react reach) are briefly sequentially displayed, the 2nd word may be omitted from the report, a phenomenon known as repetition blindness (RB). Previous researchers have suggested that consecutive letters are the unit affected by RB. Six experiments provided new data on orthographic RB. Two letters at the beginning or end of words resulted in RB, as did alternating interior letters (tactile earthly) and 3 letters with different relative positions (arid bird). However, no RB was found with a single final letter (show view). Observed RB may reflect pattern completion because RB for pairs like throat theory was reduced when the nonrepeated letters (eory) were consistent with only a single word. The experiments point to a model of orthographic RB in which both individual letters and letter sequences of length 2 or more play a role. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

On the functional relationship between word identification and letter probability.

Investigated whether words made up of probable letters and probable letter combinations are more accurately recognized than words made up of improbable letters and improbable letter combinations. The experimental method corrected shortcomings in previous research which has shown accuracy of word recognition to be affected only by word probability and not by letter probability. The shortcomings were the confounding of different letter probability dimensions within one another. In the present investigation with 40 19-43 yr old adults, 100 words were assessed with respect to the probabilities of their letters and, independently, the conditional probabilities of their letters. Subsequent tests of recognition accuracy in a brief presentation showed accuracy to be greatest for words made up of letters having either high simple probabilities or high conditional probabilities. It is concluded that word recognition is an active, perhaps serial, process which makes liberal use of individual letter statistics to facilitate accurate recognition. (French summary) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Early spelling acquisition: Writing beats the computer.

Previous research has demonstrated the superiority of a Simultaneous Oral Spelling method for young children beginning to learn to spell words. In this technique, children learn words by repeating a word spoken and written for them, writing the word while pronouncing the name of each letter, and then repeating the whole word again. In two experiments, we manipulated the motoric element of this training and obtained results indicating that having first-grade children write words leads to better spelling performance than having the children type them on a computer or manipulate letter tiles to spell them. The superiority of handwriting was maintained even under conditions where post-training spelling assessment was done on the computer and with tiles. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Visual word recognition: A dissociation of lexical and semantic processing.

These experiments illustrate 2 new dissociations in word-recognition tasks. In one, relatedness facilitated lexical decision but impaired searching for a common letter in the same pairs of words (a cross-over interaction between relatedness and task). In the other dissociation, lexicality facilitated performance (words processed faster than nonwords) while relatedness impaired performance (related words processed slower than unrelated words) in the letter search task. Two classes of explanation are discussed. In the first, the perception of relatedness serves to focus attention to the word level, thereby making explicit letter level processing more difficult and/or increasing the number of competing lexical entries via priming. In the second, spreading inhibition makes related words more difficult to process than unrelated words. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Participants instead of subjects.

Surveyed 163 undergraduates to determine their preference for using the word participants instead of the word subjects in psychological literature. 66% of the Ss preferred participants, 25% preferred subjects, and 9% had no preference. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Acoustic factors in letter cancellation: Developmental considerations.

120 children from kindergarten to Grade 6 were asked to cancel the letter e while silently reading appropriate prose passages. Ss' performance was dependent upon grade level and whether e was silent, pronounced, or in the word the. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Evidence for a parallel input serial analysis model of word processing.

A parallel input serial analysis (PISA) model of word processing was developed and tested. The goal was to expand on the "critical processing duration" hypothesis of N. F. Johnson et al (1989) so that both single-word and multiple-word presentation, letter detection data could be explained. In Experiments 1–3 four different word frequency categories on a single-presentation, letter detection task were used. These three experiments indicated that there was a curvilinear relationship between word frequency and letter detection reaction time (RT). That is, letter detection RTs for medium-high-frequency words were significantly longer than letter detection RTs for very-high-, low-, and very-low-frequency words. These results support the PISA model rather than the A. F. Healy et al (see record 1987-23957-001) version of the unitization model. In Experiments 4–5 multiple-presentation (i.e., two words), letter detection tasks were used. The PISA model could also account for the results from these two experiments, but the unitization model could not. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Does activation really spread?

Examined 3 versions of the spreading activation model for retrieval of information from memory and derived predictions for activation spreading down a linear network structure as a function of time. To test these predictions, 2 experiments were performed with 60 undergraduates in which facilitation as a function of time was measured for target words in a linearly structured paragraph. A target word was primed either by a word near the target in the paragraph structure or by a word far from the target. Results show that, as predicted, facilitation begins at about the same time for the far and near conditions. (28 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of Word Frequency and Contextual Richness on Children's Word Identification Abilities.

To examine the interaction effects of word frequency and contextual richness on word identification, 36 first-grade and 36 third-grade subjects were asked to guess a word that fit into a blank space in sentences which varied in terms of contextual richness. The target word was one member of a pair of high-versus low-frequency synonyms. Beginning with the first letter in a word, each incorrect guess prompted an additional letter cue. The results of a balanced repeated measures design indicated significant main effects for grade level, word frequency, and context and a Frequency × Context interaction, which suggests that contextual richness is more pronounced for high-frequency words and that redundancy models of reading ought to incorporate the notion of response availability. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Contrasting five different theories of letter position coding: Evidence from orthographic similarity effects.

Five theories of how letter position is coded are contrasted: position-specific slot-coding, Wickelcoding, open-bigram coding (discrete and continuous), and spatial coding. These theories make different predictions regarding the relative similarity of three different types of pairs of letter strings: substitution neighbors, neighbors-once-removed, and double-substitution neighbors. In Experiment 1, we used an illusory word paradigm and found that neighbor-once-removed similarity contexts resulted in fewer illusory word reports than substitution neighbors but more illusory words than double-substitution neighbors. In Experiments 2 and 3, we used a masked form priming technique with a lexical-decision task. The pattern of facilitation was as predicted by spatial coding but was incompatible with slot-coding, Wickelcoding, and both versions of open-bigram coding. These results provide further support for the SOLAR (self-organizing lexical aquisition and recognition) model of visual word identification. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Comparing word fragment completion and cued recall with letter cues.

Cued recall with word stems as cues and fragment completion rely on different types of letter cues and also differ in the explicit–implicit nature of the retrieval orientation. Despite these differences, variables effective in one task may be effective in the other because both rely on letter cues. Two variables known to affect cued recall were manipulated: Lexical set size (number of words that fit the letter cue) and meaning set size (number of associates generated to the studied words). Across four experiments, subjects in each task were less likely to recover targets from larger lexical sets. However, meaning set size affected cued recall but not fragment completion. These results indicate that fragment completion and letter-cued recall are based on lexical search but that cued recall also involves a semantic search component. Furthermore, type of retrieval cue had a greater effect than type of retrieval orientation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Letter Transpositions Within and Across Morphemes.

Three masked-prime naming experiments were conducted to examine the impact of morpheme boundaries on letter transposition confusability effects. In Experiment 1, the priming effects of primes containing letter transpositions within (sunhsine) and transpositions across (susnhine) the constituents of compound words were compared with correctly spelled primes and primes containing letter substitutions in naming correctly spelled targets. Primes containing transpositions within morphemes facilitated naming as much as correctly spelled primes. Primes with transpositions across morphemes did not facilitate naming more than primes with letter substitutions. Experiment 2 replicated Experiment 1 and extended the effects to so-called pseudocompounds (mayhem). Experiment 3 extended the results to agentive derivational morphology (boaster). The results are discussed in the context of visual word recognition. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Familiarization effects for bilingual letter detection involving translation or exact text repetition.

In two experiments, English-Spanish bilinguals read passages, performing letter detection on some passages by circling target letters as they read. Detection passages were sometimes familiarized (primed) by prior reading of the same passage or a translation of it. Participants detected letters in English passages in Experiment 1 and in Spanish passages in Experiment 2. For both experiments, a missing letter effect occurred (depressed detection accuracy on frequent function words relative to less frequent content words). Familiarization promoted overall improvements in letter detection only for English passages, suggesting that reprocessing benefits depend on high language fluency. For Spanish passages, cognates engendered greater error rates than noncognates; the visual similarity of Spanish and English cognates apparently enabled faster identification of Spanish cognates in a way unaffected by familiarization of the whole text passage. Priming by familiarized text was significantly higher when the passages were in the same language than when they were in different languages, suggesting that the reprocessing benefits are at the word level instead of the semantic level. These results are consistent with the GO model of reading (Greenberg, Healy, Koriat, & Kreiner, 2004) but require an expanded consideration of attention redistribution processes in that model. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Presenting words without interior letters: Superiority over single letters and influence of postmask boundaries.

In 5 experiments with a total of 32 Ss, exterior letter pairs from 4-letter words (e.g., d??k from dark) were presented in pattern-postmasked displays, in the positions they would occupy if the whole word were shown. In Exp 1, letter pairs (d??k) were reported more accurately than single letters (d) (the pair–letter effect). In Exps 2 and 3, performances with letter pairs dropped to those for single letters when each letter in a pair was masked individually or when masks were much wider than letter pairs. In Exps 4 and 5, the pair–letter effect and mask influence were both removed when one letter in each pair was replaced by a number sign (d??#) or when letter pairs were not the exterior letters of real words (e.g., y??f). These findings suggest that the exterior letter combinations of words are represented psychologically and access to these representations is affected by mask configuration. Implications for current word-recognition models are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)