Inversion effects in the tachistoscopic perception of number sequences

Abstract

Experience suggests that a common error in processing visual sequences is inversion or transposition of two or more adjacent items. This phenomenon suggests that information concerning the identity of items and their positions may be partially separable. A perception experiment was performed with tachistoscopic exposure of 5, 6, and 7-digit sequences. Abundant evidence was found for transposition errors. Further, such errors were distributed in a serial position curve much like that found for errors of single items.