Sage Journals: Discover world-class research

Abstract

According to many models, reading is driven by an attentional beam. In two experiments, we investigated the specificity of the beam by testing its sensitivity to a reading-irrelevant feature: colour. More specifically, participants were asked to read either a black-and-white version or a multi-colour version of the text in which each letter was printed in a different colour. In addition, while reading for comprehension, participants either searched for a target letter (t or d) or for a colour (pink or black). In Experiment 1, we used the Nelson–Denny reading test and in Experiment 2, we used an experimental text. In both the experiments, the typical missing-letter effect was observed with letters: Participants missed more letters in function than in content words. Most importantly, although the effect was smaller, this pattern of results was also observed when participants searched for a colour (e.g., pink or black letters in a multi-coloured passage). Our results suggest that the attentional beam involved in reading is sensitive to both reading-relevant and reading-irrelevant information.

Keywords

Missing-letter effect attention reading

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Abney

S. P.

(1987). The English noun phrase and its sentential aspect [Doctoral dissertation]. Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Assink

E. M. H.

Knuijt

P. P. N. A.

(2000). Reading development and attention to letters in words. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 25, 347–362. https://doi.org/10.1006/ceps.1999.1010

Bates

Maechler

Bolker

Walker

(2014). lme4: Linear mixed-effects models using eigen and S4 (R Package Version 1.1-18-1). http://CRAN.R-project.org/package=lme4

Boucart

Humphreys

G. W.

(1994). Attention to orientation, size, luminance, and color: Attentional failure within the form domain. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 20, 61–80. https://doi.org/10.1037/0096-1523.20.1.61

Brown

J. I.

Fishco

V. V.

Hanna

G. S.

(1993). The Nelson–Denny reading test (forms G and H). Riverside.

Cant

J. S.

Large

M.-E.

McCall

Goodale

M. A.

(2008). Independent processing of form, colour, and texture in object perception. Perception, 37, 57–78. https://doi-org.proxy.cm.umoncton.ca/10.1068/p5727

Coleman

Lindstrom

Nelson

Lindstrom

Gregg

K. N.

(2010). Passageless comprehension on the Nelson-Denny reading test: Well above chance for university students. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 43, 244–249. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022219409345017

Corcoran

D. W. J.

(1966). An acoustic factor in letter cancellation. Nature, 210, 658. https://doi.org/10.1038/210658a0

Deacon

S. H.

Parrila

Kirby

J. R.

(2006). Processing of derived forms in high-functioning dyslexics. Annals of Dyslexia, 56, 103–128.

10.

Dixon

(2008). Models of accuracy in repeated-measures designs. Journal of Memory and Language, 59, 447–456. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jml.2007.11.004

11.

Drewnowski

Healy

A. F.

(1980). Missing -ing in reading: Letter detection errors on word endings. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 19, 247–262. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0022-5371(80)90212-1

12.

Ehri

L. C.

(2005). Learning to read words: Theory, findings, and issues. Scientific Studies of Reading, 9(2), 167–188.

13.

Greenberg

S. N.

Inhoff

A. W.

Weger

U. W.

(2006). The impact of letter detection on eye movement patterns during reading: Reconsidering lexical analysis in connected text as a function of task. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 59, 987–995. https://doi.org/10.1080/17470210600654776

14.

Greenberg

S. N.

Koriat

(1991). The missing-letter effect for common function words depends on their linguistic function in the phrase. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 17, 1051–1061. https://doi.org/10.1037/0278-7393.17.6.1051

15.

Guérard

Saint-Aubin

Poirier

Demetriou

(2012). Assessing the influence of letter position in reading normal and transposed texts using a letter detection task. Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology, 66, 227–238. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0028494

16.

Healy

A. F.

(1976). Detection errors on the word the: Evidence for reading units larger than letters. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 2, 235–242. https://doi.org/10.1037/0096-1523.2.2.235

17.

Humphreys

G. W.

Boucart

(1997). Selection by colour and form in vision. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 23, 136–153. https://doi.org/10.1037/0096-1523.23.1.136

18.

Jaeger

T. F.

(2008). Categorical data analysis: Away from ANOVAs (transformation or not) and towards logit mixed models. Journal of Memory and Language, 59, 434–446. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jml.2007.11.007

19.

Klein

R. M

Hansen

(1987). Spotlight failure in covert visual orienting. Bulletin of the Psychonomic Society, 25, 447–450. https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03334737

20.

Klein

R. M.

Hansen

(1990). Chronometric analysis of apparent spotlight failure in endogenous visual orienting. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 16, 790–801. https://doi.org/10.1037/0096-1523.16.4.790

21.

Klein

R. M.

Saint-Aubin

(2016). What a simple letter-detection task can tell us about cognitive processes in reading. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 25, 417–424. https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721416661173

22.

Koivisto

Hyönä

Revonsuo

(2004). The effects of eye movements, spatial attention, and stimulus features on inattentional blindness. Vision Research, 44, 3211–3221. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.visres.2004.07.026

23.

Kučera

Francis

W. N.

(1967). Computational analysis of present-day American English. Brown University Press.

24.

MacLeod

C. M.

(1991). Half a century of research on the Stroop effect: An integrative review. Psychological Bulletin, 109(2), 163–203. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.109.2.163

25.

Masson

M. E. J.

(2011). A tutorial on a practical Bayesian alternative to null-hypothesis significance testing. Behavior Research Methods, 43, 679–690. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13428-010-0049-5

26.

Masson

M. E. J.

Loftus

G. R.

(2003). Using confidence intervals for graphically based data interpretation. Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology, 57, 203–220. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0087426

27.

New

Pallier

Brysbaert

Ferrand

(2004). Lexique 2: A new French lexical database. Behavior Research Methods, Instruments, & Computers, 36, 516–524.

28.

Newman

A. J.

Kenny

Saint-Aubin

Klein

R. M.

(2013). Can skilled readers perform a second task in parallel? A functional connectivity MRI study. Brain and Language, 124, 84–95. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bandl.2012.11.009

29.

Oliver

W. L.

Healy

A. F.

Mross

E. F.

(2005). Trade-offs in detecting letters and comprehending text. Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology, 59, 159–167. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0087471

30.

Pins

Meyer

M. E.

Foucher

Humphreys

Boucart

(2004). Neural correlates of implicit object identification. Neuropsychologia, 42, 1247–1259. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2004.01.005

31.

Posner

M. I.

Snyder

C. R. R.

Davidson

B. J.

(1980). Attention and the detection of signals. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 109, 160–174. https://doi.org/10.1037/0096-3445.109.2.160

32.

Raftery

A. E.

(1995). Bayesian model selection in social research (with discussion). In Marsden

P. V.

(Ed.), Sociological methodology (pp. 111–196). Blackwell.

33.

Rayner

Raney

G. E.

(1996). Eye movement control in reading and visual search: Effects of word frequency. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 3(2), 245–248. https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03212426

34.

Reichle

E. D.

Pollatsek

Rayner

(2006). E-Z reader: A cognitive-control, serial-attention model of eye-movement behavior during reading. Cognitive Systems Research, 7, 4–22. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cogsys.2005.07.002

35.

Reichle

E. D.

Sheridan

(2015). E-Z reader: An overview of the model and two recent applications. In Pollatsek

Treiman

(Eds.), The Oxford handbook of reading (pp. 277–290). Oxford University Press.

36.

Reingold

E. M.

Rayner

(2006). Examining the word identification stages hypothesized by the E-Z reader model. Psychological Science, 17, 742–746. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2006.01775.x

37.

Roy-Charland

Saint-Aubin

Klein

R. M.

Lawrence

(2007). Eye movements as direct tests of the GO model for the missing-letter effect. Perception & Psychophysics, 69, 324–337. https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03193753

38.

Roy-Charland

Saint-Aubin

Klein

R. M.

MacLean

G. H.

Lalande

Bélanger

(2012). Eye movements when reading: The importance of the word to the left of fixation. Visual Cognition, 20, 328–355. https://doi.org/10.1080/13506285.2012.667457

39.

Saint-Aubin

Klein

R. M.

(2001). Influence of parafoveal processing on the missing-letter effect. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 27, 318–334.

40.

Saint-Aubin

Klein

R. M.

(2004). One missing-letter effect: Two methods of assessment. Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology, 58, 61–66.

41.

Saint-Aubin

Klein

R. M.

Babineau

Christie

Gow

D. W.

Jr. (2016). The missing-phoneme effect in aural prose comprehension. Psychological Science, 27, 1019–1026. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797616645096

42.

Saint-Aubin

Klein

R. M.

Roy-Charland

(2003). Direct assessments of the processing time hypothesis for the missing-letter effect. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 29, 1191–1210. https://doi.org/10.1037/0096-1523.29.6.1191

43.

Saint-Aubin

Poirier

(1997). The influence of the word function in the missing-letter effect: Further evidence from French. Memory & Cognition, 25, 666–676. https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03211308

44.

Schneider

V. I.

Healy

A. F.

(1993). Detecting phonemes and letters in text: Interactions between different types and levels of processes. Memory & Cognition, 21, 739–751. https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03202742

45.

Schneider

V. I.

Healy

A. F.

Gesi

A. T.

(1991). The role of phonetic processes in letter detection: A reevaluation. Journal of Memory and Language, 30, 294–318. https://doi.org/10.1016/0749-596X(91)90038-L

46.

Shi

Werker

J. F.

Morgan

J. L.

(1999). Newborn infants’ sensitivity to perceptual cues to lexical and grammatical words. Cognition, 72, B11–B21. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0010-0277(99)00047-5

47.

Simons

D. J.

(2000). Attentional capture and inattentional blindness. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 4, 147–155. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1364-6613(00)01455-8

48.

Simons

D. J.

Chabris

C. F.

(1999). Gorillas in our midst: Sustained inattentional blindness for dynamic events. Per-ception, 28, 1059–1074. https://doi.org/10.1068/p2952

49.

Smith

P. T.

Groat

(1979). Spelling patterns, letter cancellation and the processing of text. In Kolers

P. A.

Wrolstad

M. E.

Bouma

(Eds.), Processing of visible language (Vol. 1, pp. 309–324). Plenum Press.

50.

Steiger

J. H.

(2004). Beyond the F test: Effect size confidence intervals and tests of close fit in the analysis of variance and contrast analysis. Psychological Methods, 9(2), 164–182. https://doi.org/10.1037/1082-989X.9.2.164

51.

Wagenmakers

E.-J.

(2007). A practical solution to the pervasive problems of p values. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 14, 779–804. https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03194105

52.

Yashar

Chen

Carrasco

(2019). Crowding and binding: Not all feature dimensions behave in the same way. Psychological Science, 30(10), 1533–1546. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797619870779

The missing-colour effect: The attentional beam captures reading-relevant and reading-irrelevant information

Abstract

Keywords

Get full access to this article

References