Influence of Competing Part-Letters on the Word Superiority Effect

Abstract

This experiment was designed to examine the effects of varying the relationship between temporally separated strings of letter parts on the word-superiority effect. The subjects were asked to report the identity of a position-cued critical letter in an array of four letters. One group of sixteen subjects reported critical letters from words and a second group of sixteen subjects reported the same letters from non-words. All the letter strings were presented in two parts. A leading array in which the information from two quadrants of a vertical by horizontal division of each letter was presented, and, after intervals of 40, 80,120,160, and 200 msec, a trailing array of letter parts. The relationship between the part-letters in the leading and trailing arrays was systematically varied as follows: (1) both the critical and the context letter parts were complementary (i.e., when combined they formed complete letters); (2) the critical letter parts were complementary but the context letter parts were not; (3) ...