title: Attentional demands of visual word recognition.
abstract: Becker's (1976, 1979, 1980, 1985; Becker & Killion, 1977; Eisenberg & Becker, 1982) verification model was used as a framework to investigate the attentional demands of word recognition. In two experiments, a lexical decision task and an auditory probe task were performed in single- and dual-task conditions. Responses to probes were divided into detection and movement measures that indexed the demands of recognition and response output, respectively. In Experiment 1, single- to dual-task decrements in probe detection performance were larger during low-frequency as compared with high-frequency trials. This finding indicates that the attentional demands of word recognition vary with word frequency. These findings were replicated in Experiment 2, which was designed to separate a response compatibility and a capacity interpretation of the results. The findings are interpreted within Becker's verification model.
authors.affiliation: University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada.
authors.forename: C M
authors.initials: CM
authors.lastname: Herdman
authors.forename: A R
authors.initials: AR
authors.lastname: Dobbs
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention; D005556:Form Perception; D006801:Humans; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual; D011597:Psychomotor Performance; D011930:Reaction Time; D011932:Reading; D012660:Semantics; D013067:Speech Perception