Graded Effects of Number of Inserted Letters in Superset Priming
Abstract
Abstract. Three masked priming experiments investigated the effects of target word length and number of inserted letters on superset priming, where irrelevant letters are added to targets to form prime stimuli (e.g., tanble-table). Effects of one, two, three, and four-letter insertions were measured relative to an unrelated prime condition, the identity prime condition, and a condition where the order of letters of the superset primes was reversed. Superset primes facilitated performance compared with unrelated primes and reversed primes, and the overall pattern showed a small cost of letter insertion that was independent of target word length and that increased linearly as a function of the number of inserted letters. A meta-analysis incorporating data from the present study and two other studies investigating superset priming, showed an average estimated processing cost of 11 ms per letter insertion. Models of letter position coding are examined in the light of this result.
References
(1996). Lexical retrieval and selection processes: Effects of transposed-letter confusability. Journal of Memory and Language, 35, 775– 800
(1979). Letter and order information in lexical access. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 18, 225– 241
(2001). DRC: A dual route cascaded model of visual word recognition and reading aloud. Psychological Review, 108, 204– 256
(1999). The self-organising lexical acquisition and recognition (SOLAR) model of visual word recognition. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of New South Wales, Australia.
(2004). What do letter migration errors reveal about letter position coding in visual word recognition?. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 30, 923– 941
(2005). The neural code for written words: A proposal. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 9, 335– 341
(1955). A multiple comparison procedure for comparing several treatments with a control. Journal of the American Statistical Association, 50, 1096– 1121
(1998). The pros and cons of masked priming. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 27, 203– 233
(1984). Repetition priming and frequency attenuation in lexical access. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 10, 680– 698
(2003). DMDX: A Windows display program with millisecond accuracy. Behavioral Research Methods: Instruments and Computers, 35, 116– 124
(2006). Letter position information and printed word perception: The relative-position priming constraint. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 32, 865– 884
(1996). Orthographic processing in visual word recognition: A multiple read-out model. Psychological Review, 103, 518– 565
(2003). Modeling letter position coding in printed word perception. In P. Bonin (Ed.), The mental lexicon(pp. 1-24). New York: Nova Science.
(1990). Orthographic processing in visual word identification. Cognitive Psychology, 22, 517– 560
(1981). An interactive activation model of context effects in letter perception: Part 1. An account of basic findings. Psychological Review, 88, 375– 407
(1983). Letter migration in word perception. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human perception and performance, 9, 913– 916
(1987). Early parallel processing in reading: A connectionist approach. In M. Coltheart (Ed.), Attention and performance XII (pp. 83-104). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
(2001). Une base de données lexicales du français contemporain sur internet: LEXIQUE. [A lexical database of contemporary French on the internet: LEXIQUE] L'Année Psychologique, 101, 447– 462
(2004). Can caniso activate casino? Transposed-letter similarity effects with nonadjacent letter positions. Journal of Memory and Language, 51, 231– 246
(1999). The role of letter identity and letter position in orthographic priming. Perception and Psychophysics, 61, 691– 706
(2004). Letter position coding in printed word perception: Effects of repeated and transposed letters. Language and Cognitive Processes, 19, 333– 367
(1989). A distributed, developmental model of word recognition and naming. Psychological Review, 96, 523– 568
(2006). A study of relative-position priming with superset primes. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 32, 399– 415
(2006). Effects of removing, inserting, and substituting letters in masked form priming. Manuscript in preparation.
(2001). How the brain codes the order of letters in a printed word: The SERIOL model and selective literature review. Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, 8, 221– 243
