Previewing the neighborhood: the role of orthographic neighbors as parafoveal previews in reading.

Full Abstract

In 2 experiments, a boundary technique was used with parafoveal previews that were identical to a target (e.g., sleet), a word orthographic neighbor (sweet), or an orthographically matched nonword (speet). In Experiment 1, low-frequency words in orthographic pairs were targets, and high-frequency words were previews. In Experiment 2, the roles were reversed. In Experiment 1, neighbor words provided as much preview benefit as identical words and greater benefit than nonwords, whereas in Experiment 2, neighbor words provided no greater preview benefit than nonwords. These results indicate that the frequency of a preview influences the extraction of letter information without setting up appreciable competition between previews and targets. This is consistent with a model of word recognition in which early stages largely depend on excitation of letter information, and competition between lexical candidates becomes important only in later stages.((c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved).

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Author information

Author/s: Williams, Carrick C (CC); Perea, Manuel (M); Pollatsek, Alexander (A); Rayner, Keith (K);

Affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Massachusetts at Amherst, Amherst, MA, USA. cwilliams(-atsign-)psychology.msstate.edu

Grants: HD26755 (Agency:NICHD NIH HHS) ; MH16745 (Agency:NIMH NIH HHS)

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Journal Article; Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural; Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

Journal: Journal of experimental psychology. Human perception and performance (J Exp Psychol Hum Percept Perform), published in United States. (Language: eng)

Reference: 2006-Aug; vol 32 (issue 4) : pp 1072-82

Dates: Created 2006/07/18; Completed 2006/12/15; Revised 2007/12/03;

PMID: 16846298, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 12/26/2008)

Sourced from the National Library of Medicine. Abstract text and other information may be subject to copyright.

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