The primacyof visual information inthe analysis of letter strings

Singer, Martin H.

doi:10.3758/bf03204304

Cited by 13 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 17 publications

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“…Aside from Gibson's rule-governed conception, other studies based on a statistical approach showed that readers were sensitive to transitional probabilities between letters and that orthographic redundancy may facilitate letter and word perception (e.g., Anisfeld, 1964;Massaro, Taylor, Venezky, Jastrzembski, & Lucas, 1980;Morton, 1969;Singer, 1980). As underlined by Henderson (1982), most of those studies eschewed wholism and generally assumed no perceptual units larger than individual letters.…”

Section: Orthographic Redundancymentioning

confidence: 99%

The internal structure of chaos: Letter category determines visual word perceptual units

Chetail

2012

Journal of Memory and Language

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a b s t r a c tThe processes and the cues determining the orthographic structure of polysyllabic words remain far from clear. In the present study, we investigated the role of letter category (consonant vs. vowels) in the perceptual organization of letter strings. In the syllabic counting task, participants were presented with written words matched for the number of spoken syllables and comprising either one vowel cluster less than the number of syllables (hiatus words, e.g., pharaon) or the same number of vowel clusters (e.g., parodie). Relative to control words, readers were slower and less accurate for hiatus words, for which they systematically underestimated the number of syllables (Experiment 1). The effect was stronger when the instructions emphasized response speed (Experiment 2) and when concurrent articulation was used (Experiment 3), and the effect did not stem from phonological structure (Experiment 4). Furthermore, hiatus words were more slowly and less accurately pronounced than control ones (Experiment 5). Finally, in lexical decision, opposite effects occurred as a function of word length, with shorter words producing a facilitatory effect and longer words showing interference (Experiment 6). Taken together, the results show that perceptual units extracted from visual letter strings are influenced by the orthographic status of letters. We discuss the implications of such findings in view of current theories of visual word recognition.Ó 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. IntroductionWhat do we see when we read a word? What are the functional units of word perception? These questions opened a paper by Santa, Santa, and Smith in 1977, who stated that the issue 'has generated an impressive body of literature in the last 75 years, but there is little agreement on an answer' (p. 585). More than 30 years later, the situation has hardly changed, and the claim still holds true.The issue of orthographic coding in the perception of letter strings has been of interest since the earliest times of research on reading (Huey, 1908). The interest keeps on being high currently because understanding the basic processes of visual word recognition constitutes a keystone of any theory of reading. Visual word recognition is not performed letter by letter, but rather operates on larger letter chunks that are processed simultaneously. Hence, a recurrent question in the field is to determine what processing units are involved in the early steps of written word identification and how the perceptual processing system organizes letter strings into larger units. In the present paper, we report a set of studies aimed at exploring the role of letter category (consonant vs. vowel letters) in determining the internal structure of polysyllabic words.The issue of perceptual units has been approached from different angles according to periods and dominant trends in the field. Below, we present an overview of the major approaches and then discuss their relevance for the perceptual processing of polysyllabic words, which is of sp...

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Section: Orthographic Redundancymentioning

confidence: 99%

The internal structure of chaos: Letter category determines visual word perceptual units

Chetail

2012

Journal of Memory and Language

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“…Likewise, Pollatsek, Well, and Schindler (1975) found that latency to respond "different" to homophonic word pairs was no longer than latency to respond to nonhomophonic word pairs. Singer (1980), using artificial letters to represent orthographic and nonorthographic strings, imposed response deadlines and found that visual information preceded phonological information in the recognition of the pseudoword targets.…”

Section: Phonological and Orthographic Factorsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Phonological and orthographic factors in the word-superiority effect

Chastain

1981

Memory & Cognition

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“…Script extensivity Many studies with artificial characters used restricted sets (e.g., 6-12 characters only; e.g., Bitan & Karni, 2004;Jeffrey & Samuels, 1967;Singer, 1980;Yoncheva et al, 2010). This could be sufficient for certain nonlinguistic studies, but it is definitely not valid when the aim is to closely reproduce situations of exposure to natural print.…”

Section: Why and How Devising A Set Of Artificial Characters?mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The aim was no more to simulate reading acquisition per se (which is actually hardly possible, see Knafle & Legenza, 1978, for a discussion), but rather to examine the developmental course of letter string processing (e.g., acquisition of visual expertise in reading: ; development of high quality lexical representations: Hart & Perfetti, 2008; letter position coding: García-Orza, Perea, & Muñoz, 2010) or to finely investigate processes that occur during letter/word processing (e.g., effects of orthographic or graphotactic regularities: Samara & Caravolas, 2014;Singer, 1980;Mason & Katz, 1976;print-tosound consistency effects: Taylor, Plunkett, & Nation, 2011; influence of first language characteristics on the acquisition of a second language: Ehrich & Meuter, 2009;Meuter & Ehrich, 2012; influence of handwriting knowledge on letter recognition: Longcamp, Boucard, Gilhodes, & Velay, 2006). For such studies, the relevance of using unknown or artificial characters lies in the possibility of investigating issues in a Bpure^way, in the sense that the degree of familiarity with the script is fully controlled and that it is easier to avoid confounds that are inevitable with natural stimuli.…”

Section: Using Unknown and Artificial Characters: State Of The Artmentioning

confidence: 99%

BACS: The Brussels Artificial Character Sets for studies in cognitive psychology and neuroscience

2017

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Written symbols such as letters have been used extensively in cognitive psychology, whether to understand their contributions to written word recognition or to examine the processes involved in other mental functions. Sometimes, however, researchers want to manipulate letters while removing their associated characteristics. A powerful solution to do so is to use new characters, devised to be highly similar to letters, but without the associated sound or name. Given the growing use of artificial characters in experimental paradigms, the aim of the present study was to make available the Brussels Artificial Character Sets (BACS): two full, strictly controlled, and portable sets of artificial characters for a broad range of experimental situations.

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The primacyof visual information inthe analysis of letter strings

Cited by 13 publications

References 17 publications

The internal structure of chaos: Letter category determines visual word perceptual units

The internal structure of chaos: Letter category determines visual word perceptual units

Phonological and orthographic factors in the word-superiority effect

BACS: The Brussels Artificial Character Sets for studies in cognitive psychology and neuroscience

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