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Letters in words are read simultaneously, not in left-to-right sequence

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Adelman, James S., Marquis, Suzanne J. and Sabatos-DeVito, Maura G.. (2010) Letters in words are read simultaneously, not in left-to-right sequence. Psychological Science, Vol.21 (No.12). pp. 1799-1801. ISSN 0956-7976

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Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0956797610387442

Abstract

The identification of individual letters is necessary for reading words in alphabetic
script (Pelli, Farell, & Moore, 2003). Sequential models of letter processing (Whitney,
2001) in reading words posit an initial left-to-right sequence of letter processing (in
left-to-right languages, such as English), each letter taking 10–25 ms to process before the
next is processed. In contrast, simultaneous models of letter processing (e.g., Tydgat &
Grainger, 2009) in reading words posit that information about the identity of each letter
starts to be extracted at the same time point, regardless of horizontal position. Here we
show that people reading four-letter words do not extract identity information for any
letter from an 18 ms display of the word, but some information about all four letters is
available from 24 ms of display. Our results indicate that a left-to-right sequence of
attention across letters is not used in establishing the cognitive representation of words.
Instead, all letters are processed simultaneously.

Item Type:

Journal Article

Subjects:

Q Science > QP Physiology

Divisions:

Faculty of Science > Psychology

Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH):

Reading -- Physiological aspects

Journal or Publication Title:

Psychological Science

Publisher:

Sage Publications, Inc

ISSN:

0956-7976

Official Date:

December 2010

Dates:

Date	Event
December 2010	Published

Volume:

Vol.21

Number:

No.12

Page Range:

pp. 1799-1801

Identification Number:

10.1177/0956797610387442

Status:

Peer Reviewed

Access rights to Published version:

Open Access

Funder:

Economic and Social Research Council (Great Britain) (ESRC)

Grant number:

RES-062-23-0545 (ESRC)

References:

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