On the function of letters in word identification: Some data and a preliminary model

Johnson, Neal F.

doi:10.1016/s0022-5371(75)80003-x

Cited by 118 publications

(119 citation statements)

References 15 publications

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“…Even in its contracted form, braille is much more difficult to read than visual print, with experienced readers of braille averaging about 70 to 100 words per minute, compared with experienced readers of print who average 250 to 300 words per minute (Foulke, 1982;Nolan & Kederis, 1969). The most popular explanation for this difference is that the unit of perceptionfor braille is the individual braille character (Millar, 1984;Nolan & Kederis, 1969),whereasthe unit of perception for print can be larger than an individual letter and may even be the whole word (Haber, Haber, & Furlin, 1983;Healy, 1976Healy, , 1980Johnson, 1975;Theios & Muise, 1977). The tactualperceptual window is much smallerthan the visual perceptual window, and tactual information is best gathered by the continuous movement of cutaneous tissue, unlike visual information which is picked up during the pauses or fixations between eye movements (Foulke, 1982).…”

Section: Braille Reading Unitsmentioning

confidence: 99%

How reading braille is both like and unlike reading print

Daneman

1988

Memory & Cognition

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The letter detection errors of blind readers of braille were compared with those of sighted readers of print in order to determine whether braille can be read in units larger than the individual braille character. Sighted readers missed a disproportionate number of hs in the word he whether the prose was intact or scrambled, supporting Healy's (1976)conclusion that high-frequency words are read in units larger than the individual letter. By contrast, blind readers missed only a disproportionate number of hs in he when reading prose, suggesting that their detection failures were based on redundancy rather than unitization. Although the unit of perception for braille appears to differ from that for print, the factors underlying braille comprehension ability do not. Braille comprehension was correlated with listening comprehension and working memory capacity, a finding consistent with the visual reading literature which has shown that it is the higher level linguistic processes that tax working memory capacity and not the lower level visual word encoding processes that chiefly underlie individual differences in comprehending print.This studyaddressed two questions regarding how blind adults read braille: Is there any evidence that braille can be read in units larger than the individual braille character? What accounts for individualdifferences in the comprehension abilities of braille readers? Braille Reading UnitsMuch of the research on braille reading has focused on the issue of whether or not braille can be read in units larger than the individual letter or braille character. The bulk of the literature takes the positionthat it cannot. This position is based on knowledge about the functioning of the tactual perceptual system on which braille depends, as well as on observations of braille reading behavior. Braille is a system of raised dots arranged in a small 2 x 3 matrix. A minimum of one raised dot and a maximum of six allows for 63 discrete patterns of dots or braille characters, each tactually distinguishablefrom the other. In Grade 1 braille, each of the 26 letters of the alphabet is represented by a unique braille character; thus, for example, the 13-letter word understanding is represented by the sequential arrangementof the braille characters for its 13 letters:

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Section: Braille Reading Unitsmentioning

confidence: 99%

How reading braille is both like and unlike reading print

Daneman

1988

Memory & Cognition

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“…For example, Brown (1970) suggested that there is a "noticing order" for different aspects of the stimulus within a fixation, beginning with word lengths and initial and final letters. Finally, several investigators have claimed that all information is acquired simultaneously (Estes, 1972;Johnson, 1975;Sperling, 1970).…”

Section: Information Utilization During Fixationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Time course of visual information utilization during fixations in reading.

Blanchard¹,

McConkie²,

Zola³

et al. 1984

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Perfor

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16 undergraduates read short texts from a cathode-ray tube as their eye movements were being monitored. During selected fixations, the text was briefly masked and then it reappeared with 1 word changed. Ss often were unaware that the word had changed. Sometimes they reported seeing the 1st presented word, sometimes the 2nd presented word, and sometimes both. When only 1 word was reported, 2 factors were found to determine which one it was: the length of time a word was present during the fixation and the predictability of a word in its context. Results suggest that visual information was utilized for reading at a crucial period during the fixation and that this crucial period could occur at different times on different fixations. The pattern of responses suggest that the first letter of a word was not utilized before other letters and that letters were not scanned from left to right during a fixation. (29 ref)

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“…Such an argument has been raised by Johnson (1975), and recent support for the independence of letter and word perception has been reported by O'Hara (1980). He found that positioning unrelated letters between two letters to be matched slows down the response, but such interference is greatly reduced or even eliminated when the interpolated letters make up a familiar word.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 92%

“…Johnson (1975) has proposed that words are recognized by features that are independent of those responsible for letter recognition. If such a model were correct, then the question arises as to whether or not familiar words normally activate letter codes at all.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Letter and word code interactions elicited by normally displayed words

Lawry¹,

LaBerge

1981

Perception & Psychophysics

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The dependence of visual word recognition on letter processing was investigated by measuring the effect of a cue word on subsequent target word processing for various degrees of cue/ target similarity. Using a simultaneous matching task (Experiments 1 and 2), modest facilitation was found for identical cue/target items only, whereas items that differed by a single letter led to substantial interference. Targets that shared internal or external letters with cues yielded latencies comparable to those for neutral or different cue conditions. The identical facilitation and high-similarity interference was also found in a lexical decision task under normal display conditions (Experiment 3). However, when direct letter processing was measured using spatially transformed targets (Experiment 4), large facilitatory effects were found for similar as well as for identical cue/target conditions. Although both letter and word codes appear to be activated by normally displayed words, such word code activity may not routinely depend upon letter code outputs.Many models of word perception (Estes, 1977;LaBerge& Samuels, 1974; Massaro, 1975;McClelland, 1979) propose that word codes are activated by means of constituent letter codes. For these models, the link from letter to word codes is generally assumed to be direct or indirect by means of intermediate spellingpattern codes. The flow of activation may proceed in discrete steps, with letter codes reaching full activation before transmitting their output to the word code level. Alternatively, McClelland (1979) has proposed that the flow of activation from one level to the next is continuous and does not depend upon prior recognition events at lower levels. Consistent with this "cascade" assumption, sufficient activation may converge on the word code from letter or spelling pattern sources, enabling it to reach recognition criterion before any given letter or spelling pattern code reaches its particular recognition threshold.In all of these variations of the letter-to-word hierarchy model, the picture of word code activation is one of a bottom-up, stimulus-driven process in which letter codes at lower levels of the perceptual system continue to feed their outputs into higher levels of codes until a word code reaches its recognition threshold. The purpose of the present experiments is to measure this dependence of word code activation on prior letter code activation.According to the letter-to-word processing viewpoint, any display that activates a word code must necessarily have activated the constituent letter codes as well, whether or not such activation is sufficient to exceed the recognition thresholds of the letter codes. It seems reasonable, therefore, to expect that words that share letters should facilitate each other via the shared letter code participation in their recognition. For example, if a person were to see the word store just prior to the word stone, then the word stone should be processed faster than if the word laugh had preceded stone. Specifically, if stone is...

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On the function of letters in word identification: Some data and a preliminary model

Cited by 118 publications

References 15 publications

How reading braille is both like and unlike reading print

How reading braille is both like and unlike reading print

Time course of visual information utilization during fixations in reading.

Letter and word code interactions elicited by normally displayed words

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