In a binary classification task meaningful but unpronounceable letter strings were compared faster than meaningless strings. This effect obtained when only one member of a pair was meaingful and it increased with number of letters. These results suggest that analysis proceeds in parallel at various levels of the processing hierarchy with interaction between semantic and graphemic processes.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
AdermanD.SmithE. F. (1971). Expectancy as a determinant of functional units in perceptual recognition. Cognitive Psychology2, 117–29.
2.
BamberD. (1969). Reaction times and error rates for “same” and “different” judgements of multidimensional stimuli. Perception and Psychophysics6, 169–74.
3.
BaronJ.ThurstonI. (1973). An analysis of the word superiority effect. Cognitive Psychology4, 207–8.
4.
BrownR. (1970). Psychology and reading: commentary on chaps. 5–10. Basic studies on readingLevinH.WilliamsJ. P.New York: Basic Books164–87.
5.
CattellJ. M. (1886). The time taken up by cerebral operations III. Mind11, 377–92.
6.
ColtheartM. (1972). Visual information processing. New Horizons in Psychology, 2DodwellP. C.Hammondsworth: Penguin.
7.
EgethH.BleckerD. (1971). Differential effects of familiarity on judgments of sameness and difference. Perception and Psychophysics9, 321–6.
8.
EichelmanW. H. (1970). Familiarity effects in a simultaneous matching task. Journal of Experimental Psychology86, 275–82.
9.
GibsonE. J.BishopC. H.SchiffW.SmithJ. (1964). Comparison of meaningfulness and pronounceability as grouping principles in the perception and retention of verbal material. Journal of Experimental Psychology67, 173–82.
10.
GibsonE. J.ShurcliffA.YonasA. (1970). Utilisation of spelling patterns by deaf and hearing subjects. Basic studies on readingLevinH.WilliamsJ. P.New York: Basic Books.
11.
HendersonL. (1972). Spatial and verbal codes and the capacity of STM. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology24, 485–95.
12.
HueyE. B. (1968). The psychology and pedagogy of readingCambridge: M.I.T. Press First published 1908.
13.
KruegerL. E. (1970a). Effect of bracketing lines on the speed of “same”-“different” judgment of two adjacent letters. Journal of Experimental Psychology84, 324–30.
14.
KruegerL. E. (1970b). Search time in a redundant visual display. Journal of Experimental Psychology83, 391–9.
15.
KruegerL. E. (1973). Effect of irrelevant surrounding material on speed of same- different judgment of two adjacent letters. Journal of Experimental Psychology98, in press.
16.
MeyerD. E.SchvaneveldtR. W. (1971). Facilitation in recognizing pairs of words: Evidence of a dependence between retrieval operations. Journal of Experimental Psychology90, 227–34.
17.
MeyerD. E.SchvaneveldtR. W.RuddyM. G. (1972). Activation of lexical memorySt. Louis Paper presented to Psychonomic Society.
18.
MezrichJ. J. (1973). The word superiority effect in brief visual displays: elimination by vocalisation. Perception and Psychophysics13, 45–8.
NovikN. (1973). Parallel processing in a word-nonword classification taskWashington Presented to Eastern Psychological Association.
21.
PillsburyW. B. (1897). A study in appreciation. American Journal of Psychology8, 315–93.
22.
PosnerM. I.BoiesS. W. (1971). Components of attention. Psychological Review78, 391–408.
23.
ReicherG. M. (1969). Perceptual recognition as a function of meaningfulness of stimulus material. Journal of Experimental Psychology81, 275–80.
24.
RumelhartD. E.SipleP. (1972). The process of recognizing tachistoscopically presented words Centre for Human Information Processing Technical Report, No. 27. San Diego, California.
25.
SpoehrK. T.SmithE. E. (1973). The role of syllables in perceptual processing. Cognitive Psychology5, 71–89.
26.
SmithE. E.HavilandS. E. (1972). Why words are perceived more accurately than nonwords—inference versus unitization. Journal of Experimental Psychology92, 59–64.
27.
ThompsonM. C.MassaroD. W. (1973). Visual information and redundancy in reading. Journal of Experimental Psychology98, 49–54.
28.
TverskyB. (1969). Pictorial and verbal encoding in a short-term memory task. Perception and Psychophysics6, 225–33.
29.
VenezkyR. L. (1970). The structure of English orthographyThe Hague: Mouton.
30.
WheelerD. D. (1970). Processes in word recognition. Cognitive Psychology1, 59–85.
31.
ZechmeisterE. B. (1969). Orthographic distinctiveness. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior8, 754–61.