Evidence from partially valid cueing that words are processed serially

Johnson, Miranda; Palmer, John; Moore, Cathleen M.; Boynton, Geoffrey M.

doi:10.3758/s13423-022-02230-w

Cited by 6 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 48 publications

(70 reference statements)

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“…Altogether, these results are remarkably similar to previous dual-task experiments with semantic categorization and lexical decision tasks (White et al, 2018(White et al, , 2020White, Palmer, et al, 2019). See also Johnson et al (2022) for consistent evidence using a partially-valid cueing paradigm. Two prior dual-task studies also found performance consistent with the parallel model when the task was to judge the color of the letters (colored vs. gray) rather than word meaning (White et al, 2018(White et al, , 2020.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 87%

Severe processing capacity limits for sub-lexical features of letter strings

Campbell,

Oppenheimer,

White

2023

Preprint

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When reading, the visual system is confronted with many words simultaneously. How much of that information can a reader process at once? Previous studies demonstrated that low-level visual features of multiple words are processed in parallel, but lexical attributes are processed serially, for one word at a time. This implies that an internal bottleneck lies somewhere between early visual and lexical analysis. We used a dual- task behavioral paradigm to investigate whether this bottleneck lies at the stage of letter recognition or phonological decoding. On each trial, two letter strings were flashed briefly, one above and one below fixation, and then masked. In the letter identification experiment, participants indicated whether a vowel was present in a particular letter string. In the phonological decoding experiment, participants indicated whether the letter string was pronounceable. We compared accuracy in a focused attention condition, in which participants judged only one of the two strings, with accuracy in a divided attention condition, in which participants judged both strings independently. In both experiments, the cost of dividing attention was so large that it supported a serial model: participants were able to process only one letter string per trial. Furthermore, we found a stimulus processing tradeoff that is characteristic of serial processing: when participants judged one string correctly, they were less likely to judge the other string correctly. Therefore, the bottleneck that constrains word recognition under these conditions arises at a sub-lexical level, perhaps due to a limit on the efficiency of letter recognition.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 87%

Severe processing capacity limits for sub-lexical features of letter strings

Campbell,

Oppenheimer,

White

2023

Preprint

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“…A related paradigm is called "partially-valid cueing," in which one of two stimulus locations is pre-cued as more likely to be task-relevant. One study using post-masked words found that when participants were asked to judge the semantic category of a word that appeared at the uncued (less attended) location, they performed no better than chance (Johnson et al, 2022). This is again consistent with the standard serial model for word recognition.…”

Section: Relation To the Wider Literature On Serial Versus Parallel W...supporting

confidence: 56%

“…We compare task performance to the predictions of serial and parallel processing. This complements other approaches that use dual-tasks or measure spatial attention effects (Johnson et al, 2022;White et al, 2018White et al, , 2020White, Palmer, et al, 2019).…”

mentioning

confidence: 77%

Reinventing the redundant target paradigm to distinguish serial and parallel processing of written words

White,

Palmer,

Sanders

et al. 2024

Preprint

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The visual system can encode many stimuli across the visual field simultaneously, but the number of objects that can be fully identified in parallel is limited. At the extreme, some objects might have to be identified serially. One useful tool for distinguishing parallel from serial processing is the redundant target paradigm, which compares responses to displays containing one target to displays containing two targets. Many parallel models predict a positive redundant target effect: faster correct responses to two targets. Here we revisit the redundant target paradigm by developing and testing predictions for a standard self-terminating serial model that accounts for the accuracy as well as the speed of each response. Surprisingly, it predicts slower responses to two-target displays than one-target displays. To test that prediction, we conducted three experiments that each measured performance for three different judgments of written words: color detection (detecting colored letters), lexical decision (detecting real words among pseudowords), and semantic categorization (detecting nouns that refer to living things). In all the experiments, only the color detection task yielded a positive redundant target effect, while the lexical and semantic tasks yielded zero or negative effects. These results are consistent with low-level features (color) for two stimuli being processed in parallel, while the meanings of two words are processed serially. Altogether, this study informs models of reading and furthers the development of general theories of response time that include errors.

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“…Altogether, these results are remarkably similar to previous dual-task experiments with semantic categorization and lexical decision tasks (White et al, 2018 , 2020 ; White, Palmer, et al, 2019b ). See also Johnson et al ( 2022 ) for consistent evidence using a partially valid cueing paradigm. Two prior dual-task studies also found performance consistent with the parallel model when the task was to judge the color of the letters (colored vs. gray) rather than word meaning (White et al, 2018 , 2020 ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 95%

Severe processing capacity limits for sub-lexical features of letter strings

Campbell,

Oppenheimer,

White

2024

Atten Percept Psychophys

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When reading, the visual system is confronted with many words simultaneously. How much of that information can a reader process at once? Previous studies demonstrated that low-level visual features of multiple words are processed in parallel, but lexical attributes are processed serially, for one word at a time. This implies that an internal bottleneck lies somewhere between early visual and lexical analysis. We used a dual-task behavioral paradigm to investigate whether this bottleneck lies at the stage of letter recognition or phonological decoding. On each trial, two letter strings were flashed briefly, one above and one below fixation, and then masked. In the letter identification experiment, participants indicated whether a vowel was present in a particular letter string. In the phonological decoding experiment, participants indicated whether the letter string was pronounceable. We compared accuracy in a focused attention condition, in which participants judged only one of the two strings, with accuracy in a divided attention condition, in which participants judged both strings independently. In both experiments, the cost of dividing attention was so large that it supported a serial model: participants were able to process only one letter string per trial. Furthermore, we found a stimulus processing trade-off that is characteristic of serial processing: When participants judged one string correctly, they were less likely to judge the other string correctly. Therefore, the bottleneck that constrains word recognition under these conditions arises at a sub-lexical level, perhaps due to a limit on the efficiency of letter recognition.

show abstract

Evidence from partially valid cueing that words are processed serially

Cited by 6 publications

References 48 publications

Severe processing capacity limits for sub-lexical features of letter strings

Severe processing capacity limits for sub-lexical features of letter strings

Reinventing the redundant target paradigm to distinguish serial and parallel processing of written words

Severe processing capacity limits for sub-lexical features of letter strings

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