title: Letter detection: A window to unitization and other cognitive processes in reading text.
abstract: Experiments are reviewed that use the letter-detection task, in which subjects read text and circle target letters. Evidence is provided that the letter-detection task reveals the processing units used in reading text and is influenced as well by visual, phonetic, and a combination of semantic and syntactic factors. Specifically, it is shown that circling a target letter in a word depends on the familiarity of the word's visual configuration, the location of the word in the reader's visual field, the phonetic representation of the letter in the word, and a combination of the word's meaning and its grammatical function.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Muenzinger Building, University of Colorado, Campus Box 345, 80309-0345, Boulder, CO, ahealy@clipr.colorado.edu.
authors.forename: A F
authors.initials: AF
authors.lastname: Healy