Constituent Letters Research Articles

Visual word recognition of three-letter words as derived from the recognition of the constituent letters

Word recognition is one of the basic processes involved in reading. In this connection, a model for word recognition is proposed consisting of a perceptual and a decision stage. It is supposed that, in the perceptual stage, the formation of possible words proceeds by separate identification of each of the letters of the stimulus word in their positions. Letter perception is taken to be conditional on position because of interaction effects from neighboring letters. These effects are dependent on both position in the word and retinal eccentricity, which are of particular relevance in reading. The letter-based approach rests on the strong relationship between the results from single-letter recognition in meaningless strings and in real words. Next, in the decision step, the many alternatives generated in the perceptual stage are matched with a vocabulary of real words. It is supposed that the final choice from among the remaining words is made in accordance with the constant ratio rule; frequency effects are not separately incorporated in the model. All predictions of the model are generated by means of data from earlier experiments. Despite being not optimally suited for this purpose, the predictions compare favorably with responses in word-recognition experiments.

The locus of the word-priority effect in a target-detection task

When subjects are required to monitor verbal displays for predesignated targets, their reaction time for word targets is less than that for subcomponents of words, such as letters. One explanation for this word-priority effect is that encoding of words is completed prior to encoding of their constituent letters. An alternative explanation is that it takes longer to compare letter targets with encoded displays than it does word targets. In this experiment, target set size and display illumination were independently manipulated during word and letter target-detection tasks, and interactions between factors were examined using the assumptions of Sternberg's (1969) additive factor approach. It was found that the magnitude of the word-priority effect increased with an increase in target set size, but not with a decrease in display illumination. This suggested that the effect occurs at a comparison stage rather than at an encoding stage in the information processing chain.

The Bureaucrat

America's dim view of the bureaucrat needs reassessment because professional standards review organizations (PSROs) and national health insurance will increase the amount of contact between physician and bureaucrat. Inevitable conflict between The Organization and the physician is aggravated by the government-business adversary relationship based on constitutionalism. With more public funds, the budget-based health institution may acquire more of the characteristics of bureaucracy. For better understanding, the bureaucrat is described, and his main types and natural history outlined. Contrasts between business and government as revealed by interchange of executives are reported. Remedies for better interaction are suggested, including liaison groups and use of the apolitical, career bureaucrat. Rules for dealing with bureaucracies are listed, including The Constituent's Letter.

Meaningfulness in classification learning with pronounceable trigrams

Summary Ss learned to classify eight CVC trigrams into two equal subsets by a paired-associate method in which one response was associated with each of the four trigrams in one subset while a second response was associated with each of the four trigrams in the other subset. One such classification could be learned on the basis of a single letter in each trigram while a second classification required Ss to take account of all three. A third condition was also included in which a different response was associated with each of the eight trigrams. Comparisons among these three conditions indicated that the tendency to respond to each trigram as a whole (rather than on the basis of its constituent letters) was not appreciably greater when the trigrams were eight meaningful words than when they were eight nonsense syllables.