Effects of alternating letter case on processing sequences of written words.

Abstract

In three grammatical decision experiments, we examined the impact of alternating letter case on sentence reading to determine the locus of case-alternation effects. Experiments 1 and 2 compared grammatical decision responses ("Is this a grammatically correct sequence of words or not?") in three different conditions: (1) SAME CASE/same case; (2) alternating CASE between WORDS; and (3) aLterNaTing cAsE wItHin WoRdS. For the grammatically correct sequences, we observed significantly faster responses in the same-case conditions compared with the between-word case manipulation, as well as a significant advantage for the between-word condition compared with within-word alternating case. These results confirm that case-alternation deteriorates sentence reading, but more so at the level of single word processing (within-word alternation) than at the sentence level (between-word alternation). Experiment 3 demonstrated that between-word case-alternation facilitates sentence processing compared with an all-lowercase condition when betweenWORDspacesAREremoved. Therefore, in the absence of between-word spacing, case changes across words facilitate sentence processing, possibly by guiding readers' eyes to optimal locations for word identification.