Experimental tests of a hierarchical model of word identification
Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal BehaviorPublished 1 October 1980
James C. Johnston, James L. McClelland
Citations141
Generate an AI Snapshot to get a quick, structured summary of this paper.
Study Snapshot
ObjectiveStudy objective
MethodsResearch methodology
PopulationPopulation studied
Sample sizeSample sizes
OutcomesStudy outcomes here
ResultsStudy results comes here
LimitationsResearch study limitations comes here
A concise AI-generated summary of the paper will appear here once you click Generate AI Snapshot.
TL;DR
A hierarchical model is presented which explains why people are more accurate in perceiving a briefly presented letter when it appears in a word than when it appearing alone (the Word—Letter Phenomenon).
Abstract
According to hierarchical models of word perception, identification of a word is mediated by identification of its component letters. In this paper a hierarchical model is presented which explains why people are more accurate in perceiving a briefly presented letter when it appears in a word than when it appears alone (the Word—Letter Phenomenon). The model is consistent with what is presently known about the conditions under which the phenomenon is and is not obtained and makes two new predictions: (1) The sizeable Word—Letter Phenomenon that can be obtained using a mask made up of letter features should be greatly reduced if the mask consists of complete letters. (2) The size of the Word—Letter Phenomenon should be the same whether or not mask letters spell a word. Both predictions run counter to the widely accepted principle that interference increases with the similarity of target and mask. Nevertheless, the experiments reported in this paper confirm both predictions.
Keywords
PsychologyComputer Science
McGraw-Hill Book CompanyStatistical principles in experimental design.
26,927 Citations1962B. J. WINER
Psychological ReviewThe magical number seven, plus or minus two: Some limits on our capacity for processing information.
17,493 Citations1956George Miller
The theory provides us with a yardstick for calibrating the authors' stimulus materials and for measuring the performance of their subjects, and the concepts and measures provided by the theory provide a quantitative way of getting at some of these questions.
Psychological ReviewThe magical number seven, plus or minus two: Some limits on our capacity for processing information.
17,276 Citations1994George Miller
About some experiments that tested how accurately people can assign numbers to the magnitudes of various aspects of a stimulus, and since the results are analyzed in terms of the concepts of information theory, I shall have to preface my discussion with a few remarks about this theory.
Psychological ReviewControlled and automatic human information processing: II. Perceptual learning, automatic attending and a general theory.
7,133 Citations1977Richard M. Shiffrin, Walter Schneider
Tested the 2-process theory of detection, search, and attention presented by the current authors (1977) in a series of experiments and demonstrated the qualitative difference between 2 modes of information processing: automatic detection and controlled search.
The Journal of PhysiologyReceptive fields and functional architecture of monkey striate cortex
6,636 Citations1968David H. Hubel, T. N. Wiesel
The striate cortex was studied in lightly anaesthetized macaque and spider monkeys by recording extracellularly from single units and stimulating the retinas with spots or patterns of light, with response properties very similar to those previously described in the cat.
Cognitive PsychologyToward a theory of automatic information processing in reading
3,815 Citations1974David LaBerge, S. Jay Samuels
A model of information processing in reading is described in which visual information is transformed through a series of processing stages involving visual, phonological and episodic memory systems until it is finally comprehended in the semantic system.
Modern Language JournalTheoretical Models and Processes of Reading
3,103 Citations1987Marva A. Barnett, Harry Singer +1 more
This volume is segmented into four sections: historical changes in reading, processes ofReading and literacy, models of reading and literacy processes, and new paradigms.
Attention And Cognitive Control 1
2,322 Citations2024Michael I. Posner, C. R. Snyder
Access to the Internal Lexicon
1,309 Citations2022Max Coltheart, Eileen Davelaar +2 more
Journal of Experimental PsychologyPerceptual recognition as a function of meaningfulness of stimulus material.
1,259 Citations1969Gerald M. Reicher
The data suggest that the first stages of information processing are done in parallel, but scanning of the resultant highly processed information is done serially.
Psychological BulletinMethod, findings, and theory in studies of visual masking.
632 Citations1968Daniel Kahneman
Classifies the various paradigms in the study of visual masking and relates them to cases of interference among cotemporaneous stimuli and introduces a distinction between criterion content and criterion level in the discussion of detection under masks and metacontrast.
Perception & PsychophysicsTemporal and spatial characteristics of selective encoding from visual displays
595 Citations1972Charles W. Eriksen, James E. Hoffman
Cognitive PsychologyAn analysis of the word-superiority effect
350 Citations1973Jonathan Baron, Ian Thurston
ScienceMeaning, Memory Structure, and Mental Processes
310 Citations1976David E. Meyer, Roger W. Schvaneveldt
It has been found that close relations between the meanings of words help people to recognize and pronounce the words faster, especially when the words are hard to see because of visual distortions.
Journal of Mathematical PsychologyA multicomponent theory of the perception of briefly exposed visual displays
279 Citations1970David E. Rumelhart
In a final section the model which is presented as an extension of Bower's multicomponent model for memory is shown to be derivable as a limiting case of LaBerge's neutral element stimulus sampling model.
Journal of Experimental Psychology Human Perception & PerformancePreliminary letter identification in the perception of words and nonwords.
272 Citations1976James L. McClelland
MindTHE TIME TAKEN UP BY CEREBRAL OPERATIONS
261 Citations1886J. McKeen Cattell
The object of this paper is to inquire into the time needed to bring about changes in the brain, and thus to determine the rapidity of thought, and to show that the times can in many cases be determined.
Perception & PsychophysicsInteractions of signal and background variables in visual processing
254 Citations1972W. K. Estes
Three variables which determine the opportunities for signal-noise confusions, display size, number of redundant signals per display, and number of alternative signals were studied in relation to nature of the noise elements, confusable or nonconfusable with signals.
Cognitive PsychologyModels of word recognition
243 Citations1979Marilyn Jager Adams
A version of the criterion bias model is suggested wherein the word advantage is attributed to interfacilitation among single letter and lexical units in memory.
The Journal of General PsychologyFamiliarity of Letter Sequences and Tachistoscopic Identification
241 Citations1954George A. Miller, Jerome S. Bruner +1 more
Journal of Experimental Psychology Human Perception & PerformancePerceptual flexibility in word recognition: Strategies affect orthographic computation but not lexical access.
194 Citations1978Thomas H. Carr, Brian J. Davidson +1 more
Dissociation between word and pseudoword identification indicates the operation of two independent encoding mechanisms during tachistoscopic recognition, a stimulus-specific or logogenlike system sensitive to particular familiar strings and an orthographic mechanism sensitive to generally applicable constraints on letter sequencing.
SciencePerception of Letters in Words: Seek Not and Ye Shall Find
157 Citations1974James C. Johnston, James L. McClelland
Subjects perceive a letter in a briefly presented word more accurately when they attend to the whole word than when they focus their attention on just the letter they want to see.
Perception & PsychophysicsThe role of familiar units in perception of words and nonwords
151 Citations1977James L. McClelland, James C. Johnston
Journal of Experimental Psychology Human Perception & PerformanceThe role of orthographic and phonotactic rules in perceiving letter patterns.
148 Citations1975Kathryn T. Spoehr, Edward E. Smith
Cognitive PsychologyEvidence for independent parallel channels in tachistoscopic perception
142 Citations1973Gerald T. Gardner
Perception & PsychophysicsVisual factors in word perception
125 Citations1973James C. Johnston, James L. McClelland
Cognitive PsychologyA test of the Sophisticated Guessing Theory of word perception
124 Citations1978James C. Johnston
Under difficult viewing conditions, a letter in a familiar word can be perceived more accurately than the same letter alone or in a string of unrelated letters.
Journal of Experimental Psychology Human Perception & PerformanceFlexible coding in word recognition.
119 Citations1976Harold L. Hawkins, Gerald M. Reicher +2 more
The findings were interpreted as showing that more than one type of coding process can underly the word superiority effect in word recognition when phonetic information does not discriminate well among response alternatives.
Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal BehaviorOn the function of letters in word identification: Some data and a preliminary model
111 Citations1975Neal F. Johnson
Three experiments are reported which demonstrate that subjects can identify a word faster than a letter within a word, but that words and single letters in isolation are identified equally fast.
Psychological ReviewOn the nature of input channels in visual processing.
110 Citations1977Elizabeth Ligon Bjork, Joddy Murray
The research reported herein was designed to assess whether the presence of noise elements in a visual display affects the detection of target letters at the perceptual or feature extraction level of processing, as well as at the decision level, and more specifically, whether input or processing channels operate in an independent or interactive fashion and how the spatial relation between signal and noise items affects detection performance.
Perception & PsychophysicsLateral masking in visual information processing
76 Citations1974George Wolford, Samuel Hollingsworth
It was concluded that letters interact at the feature level, and it was found that spaces had greater effects on “right-hand” letters than on symmetric letters.
Quarterly Journal of Experimental PsychologyImmediate Memory and the “Perception” of Letter Sequences
67 Citations1964Alan Baddeley
Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal BehaviorLetter and configuration information in word identification
58 Citations1977James L. McClelland
The results suggest that subjects relied on configuration information, especially for script words, as well as letter identity information, when categorizing both versions of each word on the basis of meaning.
Memory & CognitionLetter identification in relation to linguistic context and masking conditions
57 Citations1973Elizabeth Ligon Bjork, W. K. Estes
With a two-choice detection procedure, identifiability of signal letters was determined in backgrounds of words, nonword letter strings, or homogeneous noise characters under high performance conditions and under low performance conditions.
Perception & PsychophysicsOn the nature of perceptual information during letter perception
53 Citations1979Stephen J. Lupker
It is suggested that letter perception is better thought of as a global-to-local process, while the letter’s more local aspects become available only after relatively extensive perceptual processing.
Acta PsychologicaThe role of lateral masking and orthographic structure in letter and word recognition
50 Citations1979Dominic W. Massaro, David Klitzke
The quantitative contribution of orthographic structure and lateral masking in the perception of letter, word, and nonword test displays is critically dependent upon the processing time available before the onset of the masking stimulus.
Bulletin of the Psychonomic SocietyLetter identification in word, nonword, and single-letter displays
41 Citations1974James F. Juola, David D. Leavitt +1 more
The superiority of words over regular nonwords was used as evidence to support the hypothesis that the perceptual unit in reading can be at least as large as a four-letter word.
Memory & CognitionThe role of letter recognition in word recognition
39 Citations1976Michael J. Cosky
Results indicated no effect for letter difficulty, although recognition latency reliably decreased with word frequency and monotonically increased with word length, suggesting that the authors do not read letter by letter, but that whatever plays a role in word recognition is smaller than the word and correlated withword length in letters.
Journal of Experimental Psychology Human Perception & PerformanceWhen preparation fails: Disruptive effects of prior information on perceptual recognition.
28 Citations1976Edward E. Smith, et al.
There is a conflict in the literature on selective attention where a subject is briefly presented an item followed by a multiple-alternative recognition test, but when the items are letters the subjects' performance is disrupted by presenting the alternatives beforehand (a before disruption).
Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal BehaviorThe use of featural dependencies across letters in the visual identification of words
24 Citations1969Frank Smith
Two experiments investigated why letters in words may be identified more easily than letters in isolation and a relation between redundancy and the amount of featural information required for the first correct identification of a letter in a sequence.
Memory & CognitionDifferential backward masking of words and letters by masks of varying orthographic structure
23 Citations1978Glen A. Taylor, Robert J. Chabot
Perception & PsychophysicsIdentification of letters in words and of single letters with pre- and postknowledge vs. postknowledge of the alternatives
16 Citations1979Daniel Holender
Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal BehaviorDo words conceal their component letters? A critique of on the visual perception of words
15 Citations1975Leslie Henderson