One important debate in psycholinguistics concerns the nature of morphological decomposition processes in visual word recognition (e.g., darkness = {dark} + {-ness}). One theory claims that these processes arise during orthographic analysis and prior to accessing meaning (Rastle & Davis, 2008), and another argues that these processes arise through…

The current experiments explored the parafoveal processing of transposed-letter (TL) neighbors by using an eye-movement-contingent boundary change paradigm. In Experiment 1 readers received a parafoveal preview of a target word (e.g., "calm") that was either (1) identical to the target word ("calm"), (2) a TL-neighbor ("clam"), or (3) a…

Sequential control over routine action is widely assumed to be controlled by stable, highly practiced representations. Our findings demonstrate that the processes controlling routine actions in the domain of skilled typing can be flexibly manipulated by memory processes coding recent experience with typing particular words and letters. In two…

Two experiments examined how Dutch listeners deal with the effects of connected-speech processes, specifically those arising from word-final /t/ reduction (e.g., whether Dutch [tas] is "tas," bag, or a reduced-/t/ version of "tast," touch). Eye movements of Dutch participants were tracked as they looked at arrays containing 4…

The present study used event-related potentials (ERPs) to determine the degree to which people can process words while devoting central attention to another task. Experiments 1-4 measured the N400 effect, which is sensitive to the degree of mismatch between a word and the current semantic context. Experiment 5 measured the P3 difference between…

What form is the lexical phonology that gives rise to phonological effects in visual lexical decision? The authors explored the hypothesis that beyond phonological contrasts the physical phonetic details of words are included. Three experiments using lexical decision and 1 using naming compared processing times for printed words (e.g., plead and…

In three experiments, this study addressed two basic questions about the detection of multiletter patterns: (1) How is the detection of a multiletter pattern related to the detection of its individual components? (2) How is the detection of a sequence of letters influenced by the observer's familiarity with that sequence? (Author/BW)

To determine whether older adults find it difficult to inhibit the processing of irrelevant speech, the authors asked younger and older adults to listen to and repeat meaningless sentences (e.g., "A rose could paint a fish") when the perceived location of the masker (speech or noise) but not the target was manipulated. Separating the perceived…

Many models of spoken word recognition posit the existence of lexical and sublexical representations, with excitatory and inhibitory mechanisms used to affect the activation levels of such representations. Bottom-up evidence provides excitatory input, and inhibition from phonetically similar representations leads to lexical competition. In such a…

Rayner and Slowiaczek have a different conception of the issues our experiments address than we do. These differences are discussed. Our main point, is that the extent to which the preview produces a benefit depends on the subject's expectations. (Author/RD)

Reaction time and accuracy do not always reflect the same perceptual processes; therefore, the convergence of reaction time with accuracy within the context of a specific information processing model should be demonstrated empirically rather than assumed a priori. (Author/PN)

Three word-identification experiments suggest that a model derived from experiments with pseudowords can be applied successfully to word identification. The data derived from the experiments confirm the role of higher order verbal units in word identification and suggest the structural components of a verbal-mediation theory of reading. (Editor/RK)

Meyer, Schvaneveldt, and Ruddy report that semantic context has a larger effect on visually degraded words than on undegraded words. Degrading stimuli takes place by superimposing a dot pattern over letters thereby slowing information processing. Four experiments explore alternative explanations of this research finding. (Editor/RK)

Subjects were asked to decide if a pair of visually presented letter strings were both words (lexical decision task). Results supported an automatic spread of excitation model of associative facilitation. (Editor/RK)

Familiar letter sequences in noncued portions of a tachistoscopic display were shown to reduce accuracy of partial report. Findings suggest that familiarity may automatically direct attentional resources to a particular spatial region. Such attentional capture may be disruptive if the material is presented at another location. (Author/RD)