Does viotin activate violin more than viocin? On the use of visual cues during visual-word recognition.
The vast majority of neural and computational models of visual-word recognition assume that lexical access is achieved via the activation of abstract letter identities. Thus, a word's overall shape should play no role in this process. In the present lexical decision experiment, we compared word-like pseudowords like viotín (same shape as its base word: violín) vs. viocín (different shape) in mature (college-aged skilled readers), immature (normally reading children), and immature/impaired (young readers with developmental dyslexia) word-recognition systems. Results revealed similar response times (and error rates) to consistent-shape and inconsistent-shape pseudowords for both adult skilled readers and normally reading children - this is consistent with current models of visual-word recognition. In contrast, young readers with developmental dyslexia made significantly more errors to viotín-like pseudowords than to viocín-like pseudowords. Thus, unlike normally reading children, young readers with developmental dyslexia are sensitive to a word's visual cues, presumably because of poor letter representations.
ERI-Lectura and Departamento de Metodología, Universitat de València, <location>Valencia, Spain</location>
Manuel
M
Perea
ERI-Lectura and Departamento de Metodología, Universitat de València, <location>Valencia, Spain</location>
Victoria
V
Panadero
D000328:Adult; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D002648:Child; D003463:Cues; D003657:Decision Making; D004410:Dyslexia / Q000175:diagnosis; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual / Q000502:physiology*; D011930:Reaction Time; D011932:Reading; D055815:Young Adult
lexical decision; reading development; visual-word recognition