Semantic Errors or Statistical Flukes? a Note on Allport's “On Knowing the Meaning of Words We are Unable to Report”

Abstract

Allport (1977) has claimed that normal subjects who view briefly a multi-word array, which is then pattern-masked, produce semantic errors analogous to those made by subjects with “deep dyslexia”. We claim that the rate at which normal subjects make such errors is consistent with their arising purely by chance.