Abstract
The possibility was explored that readers can search for lexical information in prose without processing the contextual information that results from the connectedness of prose. To test this hypothesis, the connectedness of prose was eliminated by randomly rearranging the words in short prose passages that varied in readability. The results showed that when searching for specific words, readers read the normal word arrangements of passages faster than their random arrangements, regardless of readability. When searching for synonyms, normal arrangements were read faster than random arrangements only when passages were more readable. Text arrangement, search task and readability also affected recall on a completion test. These results led to the conclusion that readers who searched for lexical information in prose passages processed contextual information even when looking for specific words. The kinds of contextual information that readers processed appeared to depend on whether readers searched for literal or semantic information.