title: The letter height superiority illusion.
abstract: Letters are identified better when they are embedded within words rather than within pseudowords, a phenomenon known as the word superiority effect (Reicher in Journal of Experimental Psychology, 81, 275-280, 1969). This effect is, inter alia, accounted for by the interactive-activation model (McClelland & Rumelhart in Psychological Review, 88, 375-407, 1981) through feedback from word to letter nodes. In this study, we investigated whether overactivation of features could lead to perceptual bias, wherein letters would be perceived as being taller than pseudoletters, or words would be perceived as being taller than pseudowords. In two experiments, we investigated the effects of letter and lexical status on the perception of size. Participants who had to compare the heights of letters and pseudoletters, or of words and pseudowords, indeed perceived the former stimuli as being taller than the latter. Possible alternative interpretations of this height superiority effect for letters and words are discussed.
authors.affiliation: Université de Savoie, LPNC, F-7300, Chambéry, France. boris.new@univ-savoie.fr.
authors.forename: Boris
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: New
authors.affiliation: Laboratoire Vision Action Cognition EA7326, Université Paris Descartes, Sorbonne, Paris Cité, France.|Institut Universitaire de France, Paris, France.
authors.forename: Karine
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Doré-Mazars
authors.affiliation: INSERM-CEA Cognitive Neuroimaging Unit, Neurospin Center, Gif-sur-Yvette, France.
authors.forename: Céline
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Cavézian
authors.affiliation: INSERM-CEA Cognitive Neuroimaging Unit, Neurospin Center, Gif-sur-Yvette, France.
authors.forename: Christophe
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Pallier
authors.affiliation: Laboratoire Vision Action Cognition EA7326, Université Paris Descartes, Sorbonne, Paris Cité, France.
authors.forename: Julien
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Barra
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D006801:Humans; D007088:Illusions / Q000502:physiology*; D008960:Models, Psychological; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual / Q000502:physiology*; D011578:Psycholinguistics; D011932:Reading
keywords: Backpropagation; Interactive activation model; Perceptual fluency; Reading; Visual illusion; Visual word recognition