In a recent study using a masked priming same–different matching task, García-Orza, Perea, and Muñoz (2010) found a transposition priming effect for letter strings, digit strings, and symbol strings, but not for strings of pseudoletters (i.e., produced similar response times to the control pair ). They argued that the mechanism responsible for position coding in masked priming is not operative with those “objects” whose identity cannot be attained rapidly. To assess this hypothesis, Experiment 1 examined masked priming effects in Arabic for native speakers of Arabic, whereas participants in Experiments 2 and 3 were lower intermediate learners of Arabic and readers with no knowledge of Arabic, respectively. Results showed a masked priming effect only for readers who are familiar with the Arabic script. Furthermore, transposed-letter priming in native speakers of Arabic only occurred when the order of the root letters was kept intact. In Experiments 3–7, we examined why masked repetition priming is absent for readers who are unfamiliar with the Arabic script. We discuss the implications of these findings for models of visual-word recognition.
AchaJ.PereaM. (2008). The effects of length and transposed-letter similarity in lexical decision: Evidence with beginning, intermediate, and adult readers.British Journal of Psychology99, 245–264.
2.
BakerC.LiuJ.WaldL.KwongK.BennerT.KanwisherN. (2007). Visual word processing and experiential origins of functional selectivity in human extrastriate cortex.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences104, 9087–9092.
3.
BoudelaaS.Marslen-WilsonW. D. (2005). Discontinuous morphology in time: Incremental masked priming in Arabic.Language and Cognitive Processes20, 207–260.
4.
BoudelaaS.Marslen-WilsonW. D. (2010). Aralex: A lexical database for Modern Standard Arabic.Behavior Research Methods42, 481–487.
5.
BrunerJ. S.O'DowdD. (1958). A note on the informativeness of parts of words.Language and Speech1, 98–101.
6.
CastlesA.DavisC.ForsterK. I. (2003). Word recognition development in children: Insights from masked-priming.Masked priming: State of the art, KinoshitaS.LupkerS.Hove, UK: Psychology Press345–360.
7.
ChristiansonK.JohnsonR. L.RaynerK. (2005). Letter transpositions within and across morphemes.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition31, 1327–1339.
8.
DavisC. J. (1999). The Self-Organising Lexical Acquisition and Recognition (SOLAR) model of visual word recognition Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia.
9.
DavisC. J. (in press). The spatial coding model of visual word identification.Psychological Review.
10.
DuñabeitiaJ. A.KinoshitaS.CarreirasM.NorrisD. (2010). Is morpho-orthographic decomposition purely orthographic? Evidence from masked priming in the same–different task.Language and Cognitive Processes Advance online publication. doi: 10.1080/01690965.2010.499215.
11.
DuñabeitiaJ. A.PereaM.CarreirasM. (2007). Do transposed-letter similarity effects occur at a morpheme level? Evidence for ortho-morphological decomposition.Cognition105, 691–703.
12.
ForsterK. I.ForsterJ. C. (2003). DMDX: A Windows display program with millisecond accuracy.Behavior Research Methods, Instruments, & Computers35, 116–124.
13.
FrostR. (2009). Reading in Hebrew vs. reading in English: Is there a qualitative difference?.How children learn to read: Current issues and new directions in the integration of cognition, neurobiology and genetics of reading and dyslexia research and practice, PughK.McCradleP.New York: Psychology Press235–254.
14.
FrostR.KuglerT.DeutschA.ForsterK. I. (2005). Orthographic structure versus morphological structure: Principles of lexical organization in a given language.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory & Cognition31, 1293–1326.
15.
García-OrzaJ.PereaM.MuñozS. (2010). Are transposition effects specific to letters?.Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology63, 1603–1618.
16.
GomezP.RatcliffR.PereaM. (2008). The overlap model: A model of letter position coding.Psychological Review115, 577–601.
17.
GraingerJ.Frenck-MestreC. (1998). Masked translation priming in bilinguals.Language and Cognitive Processes13, 601–623.
18.
GraingerJ.Van HeuvenW. (2003). Modeling letter position coding in printed word perception.The mental lexicon, BoninP.New York: Nova Science Publishers1–24.
19.
GuerreraC.ForsterK. I. (2008). Masked form priming with extreme transposition.Language and Cognitive Processes23, 117–142.
20.
JacobsA. M.GraingerJ.FerrandL. (1995). The incremental priming technique: A method for determining within-condition priming effects.Perception & Psychophysics57, 1101–1110.
21.
JohnsonR. L.PereaM.RaynerK. (2007). Transposed-letter effects in reading: Evidence from eye movements and parafoveal preview.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance33, 209–229.
22.
JonidesJ.MackR. (1984). On the cost and benefit of cost and benefit.Psychological Bulletin96, 29–44.
23.
King-BlackburneL.PaltiD.PereaM.KimJ.HuangC.YeeD. (2010, June). Attention and reading skill modulate selectivity of left occipitotemporal region, Poster presented at the 16th Annual Meeting of the Organization for Human Brain Mapping. Barcelona, Spain.
24.
KinoshitaS.LagoutarisS. (2009, November). Leet priming does not reflect top-down feedback, Paper presented at the 50th Annual Conference of the Psychonomic Society. Boston, MA.
25.
KinoshitaS.NorrisD. (2009). Transposed-letter priming of pre-lexical orthographic representations.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition35, 1–18.
26.
LupkerS. J.PereaM.DavisC. J. (2008). Transposed letter priming effects: Consonants, vowels and letter frequency.Language and Cognitive Processes23, 93–116.
27.
McCloskeyM.RappB. (2000). A visually based developmental reading deficit.Journal of Memory and Language43, 157–181.
28.
MuñozS.PereaM.García-OrzaJ.BarberH. (2010, April). The time course of masked transposition priming for letters and pseudoletters, Poster presented at the 1st Joint Conference of the EPS and SEPEX. Granada, Spain.
29.
NorrisD.KinoshitaS. (2008). Perception as evidence accumulation and Bayesian inference: Insights from masked priming.Journal of Experimental Psychology: General137, 434–455.
30.
NorrisD.KinoshitaS.van CasterenM. (2010). A stimulus sampling theory of letter identity and order.Journal of Memory and Language62, 254–271.
31.
O'ConnorR. E.ForsterK. I. (1981). Criterion bias and search sequence bias in word recognition.Memory and Cognition9, 78–92.
32.
PelliD. G.BurnsC. W.FarellB.Moore-PageD. C. (2006). Feature detection and letter identification.Vision Research46, 4646–4674.
33.
PereaM.Abu MallouhR.CarreirasM. (2010). The search of an input coding scheme: Transposed-letter priming in Arabic.Psychonomic Bulletin and Review17, 375–380.
34.
PereaM.AchaJ. (2009). Does letter position coding depend on consonant/vowel status? Evidence with the masked priming technique.Acta Psychologica130, 127–137.
35.
PereaM.CarreirasM. (2006). Do transposed-letter effects occur across lexeme boundaries?.Psychonomic Bulletin and Review13, 418–422.
36.
PereaM.CarreirasM. (2008). Do orthotactics and phonology constrain the transposed-letter effect?.Language and Cognitive Processes23, 69–92.
37.
PereaM.EstévezA. (2008). Transposed-letter similarity effects in naming pseudowords: Evidence from children and adults.European Journal of Cognitive Psychology20, 33–46.
38.
PereaM.LupkerS. J. (2003a). Does jugde activate COURT? Transposed-letter confusability effects in masked associative priming.Memory and Cognition31, 829–841.
39.
PereaM.LupkerS. J. (2003b). Transposed-letter confusability effects in masked form priming.Masked priming: State of the art, KinoshitaS.LupkerS. J.Hove, UK: Psychology Press97–120.
40.
PereaM.LupkerS. J. (2004). Can CANISO activate CASINO? Transposed-letter similarity effects with nonadjacent letter positions.Journal of Memory and Language51, 231–246.
41.
PereaM.RosaE.GómezC. (2005). The frequency effect for pseudowords in the lexical decision task.Perception and Psychophysics67, 301–314.
42.
RumelhartD. E. (1977). Toward an interactive model of reading.Attention and Performance VI, DornicS.New York: Academic Press573–603.
43.
SchoonbaertS.GraingerJ. (2004). Letter position coding in printed word perception: Effects of repeated and transposed letters.Language and Cognitive Processes19, 333–367.
44.
TydgatI.GraingerJ. (2009). Serial position effects in the identification of letters, digits and symbols.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance35, 480–498.
45.
VelanH.FrostR. (2007). Cambridge University vs. Hebrew University: The impact of letter transposition on reading English and Hebrew.Psychonomic Bulletin & Review14, 913–918.
46.
VelanH.FrostR. (2009). Letter-transposition effects are not universal: The impact of transposing letters in Hebrew.Journal of Memory and Language61, 285–302.
47.
WhitneyC. (2001). How the brain encodes the order of letters in a printed word: The SERIOL model and selective literature review.Psychonomic Bulletin and Review8, 221–243.
produced similar response times to the control pair 
). They argued that the mechanism responsible for position coding in masked priming is not operative with those “objects” whose identity cannot be attained rapidly. To assess this hypothesis, Experiment 1 examined masked priming effects in Arabic for native speakers of Arabic, whereas participants in Experiments 2 and 3 were lower intermediate learners of Arabic and readers with no knowledge of Arabic, respectively. Results showed a masked priming effect only for readers who are familiar with the Arabic script. Furthermore, transposed-letter priming in native speakers of Arabic only occurred when the order of the root letters was kept intact. In Experiments 3–7, we examined why masked repetition priming is absent for readers who are unfamiliar with the Arabic script. We discuss the implications of these findings for models of visual-word recognition.