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When exposed to words presented under perceptually disfluent conditions (e.g., words written in Haettenschweiler font), participants have difficulty initially recognizing the words. Those same words, though, may be better remembered later than words presented in standard type font. This counterintuitive finding is referred to as the disfluency effect. Evidence for this disfluency effect, however, has been mixed, suggesting possible moderating factors. Using a recognition memory task, level of disfluency was examined as a moderating factor across three experiments using a novel cursive manipulation that varied on degree of legibility (easy-to-read cursive vs. hard-to-read cursive). In addition, list type and retention interval between study and test were manipulated. Across all three experiments, cursive words engendered better memory than type-print words. This memory effect persisted across varied list designs (blocked vs. mixed) and a longer (24-hour) retention interval. A small-scale meta-analysis across the three experiments suggested that the cursive disfluency effect is moderated by level of disfluency: easy-to-read cursive words tended to be better remembered than hard-to-read cursive words. Taken together, these results challenge extant accounts of the disfluency effect. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.

Visual salience can increase search efficiency in complex displays but does that influence persist when completing a specific search? In two experiments, participants were asked to search webpages for the prices of specific products. Those products were located near an area of high visual salience or low visual salience. In Experiment 1, participants were read the name of the product before searching; in Experiment 2, participants were shown an image of the exact product before searching. In both cases, participants completed their search more quickly in the high-salience condition. This was true even when there was no ambiguity about the visual characteristics of the product. Our findings suggest that salience guides users through complex displays under realistic, goal-driven task conditions. Designers can use this knowledge to create interfaces that are easier to search by aligning salience and task-critical elements.

A core assumption underlying competitivenetwork models of word recognition is that in order for a word to be recognized, the representations of competing orthographically similar words must be inhibited. This inhibitory mechanism is revealed in the masked-priming lexical-decision task (LDT) when responses to orthographically similar word prime-target pairs are slower than orthographically different word prime-target pairs (i.e., inhibitory priming). In English, however, behavioral evidence for inhibitory priming has been mixed. In the present study, we utilized a physiological correlate of cognitive effort never before used in the maskedpriming LDT, pupil size, to replicate and extend behavioral demonstrations of inhibitory effects (i.e