title: Is nevtral NEUTRAL? Visual similarity effects in the early phases of written-word recognition.
abstract: For simplicity, contemporary models of written-word recognition and reading have unspecified feature/letter levels-they predict that the visually similar substituted-letter nonword PEQPLE is as effective at activating the word PEOPLE as the visually dissimilar substituted-letter nonword PEYPLE. Previous empirical evidence on the effects of visual similarly across letters during written-word recognition is scarce and nonconclusive. To examine whether visual similarity across letters plays a role early in word processing, we conducted two masked priming lexical decision experiments (stimulus-onset asynchrony = 50 ms). The substituted-letter primes were visually very similar to the target letters (u/v in Experiment 1 and i/j in Experiment 2; e.g., nevtral-NEUTRAL). For comparison purposes, we included an identity prime condition (neutral-NEUTRAL) and a dissimilar-letter prime condition (neztral-NEUTRAL). Results showed that the similar-letter prime condition produced faster word identification times than the dissimilar-letter prime condition. We discuss how models of written-word recognition should be amended to capture visual similarity effects across letters.
authors.affiliation: Departamento de Metodología and ERI-Lectura, Universitat de València, Av. Blasco Ibáñez, 21, 46010, Valencia, Spain. Ana.Marcet@uv.es.
authors.forename: Ana
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Marcet
authors.affiliation: Departamento de Metodología and ERI-Lectura, Universitat de València, Av. Blasco Ibáñez, 21, 46010, Valencia, Spain.
authors.forename: Manuel
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Perea
mesh_terms: D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual; D011930:Reaction Time; D011932:Reading; D021641:Recognition, Psychology; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Lexical access; Masked priming; Visual similarity