Abstract
To analyze the impact of outline shape on visual word recognition, the visual pattern of the stimuli can be distorted by size alternation. Contrary to the predictions of models that rely on outline shape (Allen, Wallace, & Weber, 1995), the effect of size alternationwas greater for low-frequency words than for high-frequency words in a lexical decision task (Experiment 1). In Experiment 2, the effect of case type (lowercase vs. UPPERCASE) occurred for low-frequency words, but not for high-frequency words. The effect of neighborhood size was remarkably similar in the two experiments. The results can be readily explained in the framework of a resonance model (Grossberg & Stone, 1986), in which a mismatch between the original sensory pattern and the abstract orthographic code slows down the formation of a stable percept.
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Parts of this research were reported at the 40th Annual Meeting of the Psychonomic Society, Los Angeles, 1999. E. R. was the recipient of a predoctoral grant from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Culture.
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Perea, M., Rosa, E. Does “whole-word shape” play a role in visual word recognition?. Perception & Psychophysics 64, 785–794 (2002). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03194745
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03194745