Interaction of Two Sources of Verbal Context in Word Identification

Abstract

Incomplete eight-letter target words in the final position of 9- or 10-word sentences were presented to college students for completion. With separate groups of subjects, the number of context letters of the target word varied from 0 to 6; and, the number of context words preceding the target word varied from 0 to 8. It was found that the obtained proportions of correct word identifications with combined word and letter contexts were substantially greater than predicted by an independence model of interaction between the effects of letter context alone and word context alone. This finding was verified by a letter by letter analysis of the results. Two alternative quantitative descriptions of the interaction of word and letter context in word identification were also examined. The predicted proportions of correct word identifications with these models more nearly approached the obtained scores.