Abstract
Fourth- and seventh-grade children and college-age adults proof read passages typed either in lowercase or in all capital letters. Words were misspelled by deleting one of four letters, s, c, k, or p, that have similar features in lowercase and uppercase. Proof reading errors decreased with age and increasing reading ability, but all of the subjects were sensitive to changes in word shape— they missed more words with deletions of s or c than k or p in the lowercase passage but not in the all-capitals passage. These findings indicate that word shape is an important variable in recognizing familiar words, even for young readers.
Article PDF
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Abramovici, S. (1983). Errors in proof reading: Evidence for syntactic control of letter processing?Memory & Cognition,11, 258–261.
Besner, D. (1989). On the role of outline shape and word-specific visual pattern in the identification of function words: None.Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology,41A, 91–105.
Bouma, H. (1971). Visual recognition of isolated lower-case letters.Vision Research,11, 459–474.
Broadbent, D. E. (1967). Word-frequency effect and response bias.Psychological Review,74, 1–15.
Cattell, J. M. (1886). The time taken up by cerebral operations.Mind,11, 220–242, 377–392, 524–538.
Corcoran, D. W. J. (1967). Acoustic factor in proof reading.Nature,214, 851–852.
Cunningham, T. F., Healy, A. F., Kanengiser, N., Chizzick, L., &Willitts, R. L. (1988). Investigating the boundaries of reading units across ages and reading levels.Journal of Experimental Child Psychology,45, 175–208.
Danwnowski, A. (1978). Detection errors on the word the: Evidence for the acquisition of reading levels.Memory& Cognition,6, 403–409.
Drewnowski, A. (1981). Missing-ing in reading: Developmental changes in reading units.Journal of Experimental Child Psychology,31, 154–168.
Drewnowski, A., &Healy, A. F. (1977). Detection errors onthe andand: Evidence for reading units larger than the word.Memory& Cognition,5, 636–647.
Erdmann, B., &Dodge, R. (1898).Psychologische untersuchungen über das lesen. auf experimetaller grundlage [Psychological investigations of reading, on an experimental basis]. Hale, Germany: Niemeyer.
Garner, W. R. (1981). The role of configuration in the identification of visually degraded words.Memory & Cognition,9, 445–452.
Guttentag, R. E. (1981). The role of word shape as a recognition cue in children’s automatic word processing.Child Development,52, 363–366.
Haber, L. R., Haber, R. N., &Furlin, K. R. (1983). Word length and word shape as sources of information in reading.Reading Research Quarterly,18, 165–189.
Haber, R. N., &Haber, L. R. (1981). Visual components of the reading process.Visible Language,15, 147–182.
Haber, R. N., &Schindler, R. M. (1981). Error in proof reading: Evidence of syntactic control of letter processing?Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance,7, 573–579.
Hadley, J. A., &Healy, A. F. (1991). When are reading units larger than the letter? Refinement of the unitization reading model.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition,17, 1062–1073.
Healy, A. F. (1976). Detection errors on the word the: Evidence for reading units larger than letters.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance,2, 235–242.
Healy, A. F. (1980). Proofreading errors on the word the: New evidence on reading units.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance,6, 45–57.
Healy, A. F. (1981). The effects of visual similarity on proof reading for misspellings.Memory & Cognition,9, 453–460.
Healy, A. F., Conboy, G. L., &Drewnowski, A. (1987). Characterizing the processing units of reading: Effects of intra- and inter-word spaces in a letter detection task. In B. K. Britton & S. M. Glynn (Eds.),Executive control processes in reading (pp. 279–296). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Healy, A. F., &Drewnowski, A. (1983). Investigating the boundaries of reading units: Letter detection in misspelled words.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance,9, 413–426.
Healy, A. F., Oliver, W. L., &McNamara, T. P. (1987). Detecting letters in continuous text: Effects of display size.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance,13, 279–290.
Healy, A. F., Volbrecht, V. J., &Nye, T. R. (1983). The effects of perceptual condition on proof reading for misspellings.Memory & Cognition,11, 528–538.
Johnson, N. F. (1981). Integration processes in word recognition. In O. J. L. Tzeng & H. Singer (Eds.),Perception of print: Reading research in experimental psychology (pp. 29–63). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Lindsay, P. H., &Norman, D. A. (1977).Human information processing: An introduction to psychology (2nd ed.). New York: Academic Press.
Lupker, S. J. (1979). On the nature of perceptual information during letter perception.Perception & Psychophysics,25, 303–312.
Massaro, D. W., &Schmuller, J. (1975). Visual features, preperceptual storage, and processing time in reading. In D. W. Massaro (Ed.),Understanding language: An information processing analysis of speech perception, reading, and psycholinguistics (pp. 207–239). New York: Academic Press.
McClelland, J. L. (1977). Letter and configuration information in word identification.Journal of Verbal Learning & Verbal Behavior,16, 137–150.
McClelland, J. L., &Rumelhart, D. E. (1981). An interactive activation model of context effects in letter perception: Part 1. An account of basic findings.Psychological Review,88, 375–407.
Monk, A. F., &Hulme, C. (1983). Errors in proof reading: Evidence for the use of word shape in word recognition.Memory & Cognition,11, 16–23.
Oden, G. C. (1984). Dependence, independence, and emergence of word features.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance,10, 394–405.
O’Regan, K. (1979). Saccade size control in reading: Evidence for the linguistic control hypothesis.Perception & Psychophysics,25, 501–509.
Paap, K. R., Newsome, S. L., McDonald, J. E., &Schvaneveldt, R. W. (1982). An activation-verification model for letter and word recognition: The word-superiority effect.Psychological Review,89, 573–594.
Paap, K. R., Newsome, S. L., &Noel, R. W. (1984). Word shape’s in poor shape for the race to the lexicon.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance,10, 413–428.
Posnansky, C. J., &Rayner, K. (1977). Visual-feature and response components in a picture-word interference task with beginning and skilled readers.Journal of Experimental Child Psychology,24, 440–460.
Rayner, K. (1979). Eye guidance in reading: Fixation locations within words.Perception,8, 21–30.
Rayner, K., McConkie, G. W., &Zola, D. (1980). Integrating information across eye movements.Cognitive Psychology,12, 206–226.
Reading test for New York State elementary schools: Grade 6—Form E manual for administrators and teachers (1982). Albany, NY: University of the State of New York, State Education Department.
Reading test for New York State elementary schools: Grade 3—Form R manual for administrators and teachers (1983). Albany, NY: University of the State of New York, State Education Department.
Rumelhart, D. E., &Siple, P. (1974). Process of recognizing tachistoscopically presented words.Psychological Review,81, 99–113.
Stroop, J. R. (1935). Studies of interference in serial verbal reactions.Journal of Experimental Psychology,18, 643–662.
Underwood, G., &Bargh, K. (1982). Word shape, orthographic regularity, and contextual interactions in a reading task.Cognition,12, 197–209.
Walker, P. (1987). Word shape as a cue to the identity of a word: An analysis of the Kučera and Francis (1967) word list.Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology,39A, 675–700.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Additional information
Parts of this project were conducted at St. Lawrence University in Canton, New York, and at the University of Colorado, Boulder. A brief report of this work was presented at the 27th Annual Meeting of the Psychonomic Society in New Orleans, November 14, 1986. The research was supported in part by special research funds provided through a Faculty Research Award and a Student Research Award from St. Lawrence University, by National Science Foundation Grant BNS8O-25020 and Army Research Institute Contract MDA903-90-K-0066 to the Institute of Cognitive Science at the University of Colorado, and by a Council on Research and Creative Work research grant-in-aid from the University of Colorado.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Healy, A.F., Cunningham, T.F. A developmental evaluation of the role of word shape in word recognition. Memory & Cognition 20, 141–150 (1992). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03197163
Received:
Accepted:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03197163