This study examined the differences in processing between regular and dyslexic readers in a lexical decision task in different visual field presentations (left, right, and center). The research utilized behavioral measures that provide information on accuracy and reaction time and electro-physiological measures that permit the examination of brain…

Mediated priming refers to the activation of a target (e.g., "stripes") by a prime (e.g., "lion") that is related indirectly via a connecting mediator (e.g., tiger). In previous mediated priming studies (e.g., McNamara & Altarriba, 1988), the mediator was associatively related to the prime. In contrast, pure mediated…

In this experiment, syntactic constraints on the retrieval of orthography were investigated using homophones embedded in sentence contexts. Participants typed auditorily presented sentences that included a contextually appropriate homophone that either shared part of speech with its homophone competitor (i.e., was syntactically unambiguous) or had…

Two experiments were undertaken to evaluate the influence of automatic semantic processing of pictures on word judgments. Results indicated that (1) perceptual factors influence responding in these types of tasks, (2) picture processing can facilitate word processing in some circumstances, and (3) incompatible background pictures can interfere…

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)

The relationship between lower level code availability and top-down contextual processing in word recognition was investigated in two experiments. The major finding was that the increment in performance resulting from coherent organization relative to the random passage was equivalent in both normal and reversed orthographic forms. (Author/GK)

While studies of college-level readers have yielded evidence both for and against the use of phonological or speech recoding in the recognition of written words, no consistent picture of when recoding occurs has yet emerged. However, one model, the adjunct access model, can account for the previous research findings. According to this model,…

M.H. Ashcraft found that people tend to know more properties of items they rate as typical of a category than of items they rate as atypical, suggesting that variations in typicality result from variations in familiarity. Three experiments were designed to challenge this suggestion. The first investigated whether familiarity is necessarily…

Four experiments investigated the phenomenon of letter migration, the tendency of readers to assign letters from one word to another appearing in close proximity. The experiments, which involved college undergraduate students, revealed several properties of letter migration, including the following: (1) migrations are more frequent when the words…

Two experiments examined the perceptual processing of letters embedded within one- and two-syllable words and visually similar nonwords. Results suggest that (1) the size of compelling perceptual units seems limited, and (2) unit size is not necessarily related to the correspondence between letter order and pronounceability. (Author/BW)

The nature of the target designation process--which involves forming interassociated mental structures to allow retrieval of individual items of information--was studied. It was shown that visual imagery instructions improved target identification as well as word recognition but did not appear to affect the representational format. (Author/MH)

Three studies were conducted in an attempt to replicate previous research concluding that semantic meaning is accessed in the absence of conscious awareness. A pattern mask was used to interrupt the processing of stimulus words after 30 milliseconds; at this duration subjects were not able to identify the stimulus words or even to determine…

That additional exposure to memorial material improves subsequent retrieval probabilities was explored. The effect of a recognition test on subsequent recall and recognition of categorized lists was studied. Prior recognition tests increased recall of original items, but also increased intrusions. Similarly, prior exposure increased hit rates and…

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)

It was hypothesized that the concept of cognitive effort in memory is both useful and important. Cognitive effort was defined as the engaged proportion of limited- capacity central processing. Four experiments were conducted, and the implications and potential applications of the concept were discussed. (Author/MH)