Case mixing and the task-sensitive disruption of lexical processing.

Mayall, Kate; Humphreys, Glyn W.

doi:10.1037/0278-7393.22.2.278

Cited by 62 publications

(83 citation statements)

References 41 publications

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“…As has been found on numerous other occasions, whole-word naming responses were slower to mixed-case than to same-case letter strings (for representative data, see Besner & Johnston, 1989;Mayall & Humphreys, 1996;Mayall et al, 1997). The task of naming the buried word was also more difficult than that of naming the whole words (RTs were longer, and errors increased).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 74%

The PIG in sPrInG: Evidence on letter grouping from the reading of buried words

Humphreys

Mayall

Cooper

2003

Psychonomic Bulletin & Review

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We introduce a novel procedure for investigating factors that determine selective attention to letters in words. Participants were presented with words (in Experiments 1 and 3) and nonwords (in Experiment 2) that contained a buried word whose letters differed in color relative to the other letters present (e.g., pig, in spring). The strings were presented in single case or mixed case, keeping the letters of the buried words in one case (SpRiNg). The time in which the whole stimulus was named was shorter for same-case than for mixed-case strings (for spring: spring < SpRiNg). In contrast, the time in which buried words were named was shorter in mixed-than in same-case strings (for pig: spring > SpRiNg). Across items, the effects of case mixing were negatively correlated across the two tasks. The positive effect of case mixing for buried words also occurred irrespective of whether the whole string was a word or a nonword, and there were contributions from similarity of both letter size and case. The results suggest that case mixing can facilitate selective attention to letters, which is otherwise disrupted by size-and case-based grouping across letter strings. The study provides evidence for letter grouping using size and case information.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 74%

The PIG in sPrInG: Evidence on letter grouping from the reading of buried words

Humphreys

Mayall

Cooper

2003

Psychonomic Bulletin & Review

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“…Interestingly, alternatingsize presentations did not disrupt performance for nonwords (a nonsignificant 7.5-msec effect). 2 Together, these findings suggest that alternating-size presentations have not slowed down letter identification, because if they had, an effect of type size should have been found for nonword stimuli (as occurs with aLtErNaTiNgcAsE presentations; see Allen et al, 1995;Besner & Johnston, 1989;Kinoshita, 1987;Mayall & Humphreys, 1996). Keep in mind that the quality of the letters is not degraded in any way, and it could well be the case that alternatingsize stimuli do not disrupt letter identification.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For instance, it could be argued that the a and the o in the word favor may be grouped together and form an inappropriate unit for visual lexical access, thus slowing word identification (Mayall & Humphreys, 1996). To obtain further evidence for the present pattern of results in a less disruptive situation, Experiment 2 uses a different manipulation of visual familiarity: Items will be presented in the standard lowercase print (e.g., favor) or in UPPERCASE (FAVOR).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For instance, the number of possible patterns from which each letter must be recognized is doubled when a pure case condition is switched to mIxEd cAsE (Paap, Newsome, & Noel, 1984). More important, case alternation may also alter the normal mode for lexical access (Forster & Guess, 1996;Mayall & Humphreys, 1996;Mayall, Humphreys, & Olson, 1997;Paap et al, 1984). In Experiment 2, we manipulate the case of the letters: Items are presented either in lowercase or in UPPERCASE.…”

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confidence: 99%

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Does “whole-word shape” play a role in visual word recognition?

Perea

Rosa

2002

Perception & Psychophysics

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“…An inspection of the literature on the pseudohomophone effect reveals a crucial difference between our experiment and other experiments concerned with the pseudohomophone effect. Specifically, the researchers in past studies have presented both pseudohomophones and pseudowords in mixed blocks (Besner & Davelaar, 1983;Goswami, Ziegler, Dalton, & Schneider, 2001;Mayall & Humphreys, 1996;McCann et al, 1988;Pring, 1981;Seidenberg et al, 1996;Underwood, Roberts, & Thomason, 1988;Vanhoy & Van Orden, 2001). That is, pseudohomophones and pseudowords were intermixed and both were seen by the participants.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Semantic and phonological influences on the processing of words and pseudohomophones

2003

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In the area of visual word recognition, one of the most debated topics concerns the degree to which phonological codes play a role in the recognition of letter strings. As evidence that phonology does play a role in the lexical decision task, researchers have shown that nonword response latencies are longer to pseudohomophones (e.g., nale) than to orthographically matched pseudowords (e.g., nalp; Coltheart, Davelaar, Jonasson, & Besner, 1977;Fera & Besner, 1992;McCann, Besner, & Davelaar, 1988;Rubenstein, Lewis, & Rubenstein, 1971;Seidenberg, Petersen, MacDonald, & Plaut, 1996), implying that the pseudohomophone accesses the representation of its base word (e.g., nail ), and that this base word representation slows the processing of the pseudohomophone. Because the pseudohomophone effect has become central to models of word recognition (Ziegler, Jacobs, & Klüppel, 2001), it is critical that we understand fully the processes underlying the effect.It is not clear, however, exactly what properties of the base word affect processing of pseudohomophones. Two potential representations are usually implicated. The first and most obvious candidate is simply the phonological representation itself. According to this account, pseudohomophones activate the phonological representation of their base words, and because the phonological representation of a pseudohomophone perfectly matches the phonologyof an actual word, "no" latencies toward pseudohomophones are increased. Thus, on this account, it is simply the phonological form of the pseudohomophone that slows processing. This purely phonological account of the pseudohomophoneeffect is the most common ). However, another possibility is that a pseudohomophone activates the semantic representation of its base word. On this account, a pseudohomophone activates the phonological representation of its base word, which in turn activates the word's semantic representation. Thus, "no" latencies to a pseudohomophone are longer because the semantic activation associated with the base word incorrectly indicates that the pseudohomophone is a word. The difference between these two accounts is that the latter posits an extra step (i.e., from phonology to semantics).One can understand the semantic account of the pseudohomophone effect by considering a framework within which the orthographic, phonological, and semantic levels are fully interactive (see, e.g., Pexman & Lupker, 1999;Seidenberg & McClelland, 1989). In this framework, the phonological representation of a pseudohomophone activates the semantic representation of its base word because of the match between the phonology of the pseudohomophone and that of the base word. With this increased semantic activation,a pseudohomophonewill appear more wordlike, and the "no" latency will increase. Of course, these accounts of the pseudohomophone effect (i.e., the phonological and the semantic accounts) are not necessarily mutually exclusive. It is possible that the processing of pseudohomophones is affected by both factors (i.e., by both the p...

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Case mixing and the task-sensitive disruption of lexical processing.

Cited by 62 publications

References 41 publications

The PIG in sPrInG: Evidence on letter grouping from the reading of buried words

The PIG in sPrInG: Evidence on letter grouping from the reading of buried words

Does “whole-word shape” play a role in visual word recognition?

Semantic and phonological influences on the processing of words and pseudohomophones

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