Perceptual versus postperceptual mediation of visual context effects: Evidence from the letter-superiority effect

Abstract

Two experiments demonstrated letter-context effects that cannot easily be accounted for by postperceptual theories based on structural redundancy, figural goodness, or memory advantage. In Experiment 1, subjects identified the color of a letter fragment more accurately in letter than in nonletter contexts. In Experiment 2, subjects identified the feature presented in a precued color more accurately in letters than in nonlettcrs. We argue that these effects result from topdown perceptual processing.Briefly presented line segments are identified more accurately when they are embedded in coherent object-like contexts than when they are either embedded in noncoherent contexts or presented alone. These visual-context effects are referred to as the object-superiority effect (OSE) and the object-line effect (OLE), respectively. The original demonstrations of the OSE (Weisstein & Harris, 1974) and the OLE (Williams & Weisstein, 1978) were aimed at drawing an "analogy between object and word perception, and opening further opportunities for studying the effects of contexts on the perception of constituent elements without being restricted to linguistic material" (Williams & Weisstein, 1978, p. 85). Similarly, the welldocumented context effects in word perception inspired the exploration of a variety of visual-context effects with stimuli such as faces (e.g., Gyoba, Arimura, & Maruyama, 1980;Homa, Haver, & Schwartz, 1976;Purcell & Stewart, 1986van Santen & Jonides, 1978), letters (Schendel & Shaw, 1976), and real-world scenes (Biederman, 1972(Biederman, , 1981Biederman, Glass, & Stacey, 1973;Palmer, 1975). This research was supported by NSERC Grant A2579 to P. J. and NSERC Grant 001'0105451 to E. M. R. We are indebted to Liz Bosman, Phil Merikle, and Derek Besner for many constructive discussions of the issues, to Keith McGowan for writing the software, and to Susan Fraser for assisting in data collection. We would especially like to acknowledge Lester Krueger's helpful input during the process of revising earlier drafts of this paper. We also thank James Enns and two anonymous reviewers for their contributions. Correspondence should be addressed to either E. M. Reingold, Department of Psychology, University of Toronto, Erindale College, 3359 Mississauga Road, Mississauga, Ontario, Canada L5L lC6 (e-mail: reingold@psych.toronto.edu); after July 1993: School of Psychology, The University of New South Wales, P.O. Box I, Kensington, New South Wales, 2033, Australia; or P. Jolicoeur, Department of Psychology, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada N2L 3GI.Despite the intriguing surface similarities between the various visual-context effects, it may be premature to conclude that these effects are, in fact, comparable. For example, Weisstein and her colleagues (e.g., Weisstein & Harris, 1974;Williams & Weisstein, 1978) viewed the OSE and the OLE as analogous to the word-superiority effect (WSE) and the word-letter effect (WLE), respectively (for reviews of the WSE literature, see Baron, 1978;Johnston, 1981;Krueger, 1...

Perceptual automaticity in expert chess players: Parallel encoding of chess relations

“…Finally, similar to other visual context effects with such stimuli as words (see Baron, 1978, Johnston, 1981, and Krueger, 1975, for reviews), letters (Reingold & Jolicoeur, 1993;Schendel & Shaw, 1976), faces (e.g., Gyoba, Arimura, & Maruyama, 1980;Homa, Haver, & Schwartz, 1976;Purcell & Stewart, 1986, 1988van Santen & Jonides, 1978), and real-world scenes (Biederman, 1972(Biederman, , 1981Biederman, Glass, & Stacey, 1973;Palmer, 1975), the present findings provide a powerful demonstration of the effects of familiarity on perception. Specifically, a coherent and familiar context (i.e., a chess configuration) enhanced the perception of constituent elements (i.e., chess relations).…”

Lateral masking: Limitations of the feature interaction account

“…Higher level letter codes organize the information derived by feature coding processes via top-down links. In analogy to word recognition, where a word superiority effect is observed, there is also a letter superiority effect (see also Reingold & Joliceur, 1993). Word superiority means that a letter presented in a word context is recognized better than a letter in a non word context (Reicher, 1969;Wheeler, 1970).…”

More than meets the eye: Context effects in word identification

“…Finally, Reingold and Jolicoeur (1993) tested the effects of word context on letter identification by embedding critical letter fragments in letter or nonletter contexts. Subjects more accurately identified the color of a critical letter fragment when it appeared in a letter context than when it appeared in a nonletter context.…”