Can I order a burger at rnacdonalds.com? Visual similarity effects of multi-letter combinations at the early stages of word recognition.

Abstract

Previous research has shown that early in the word recognition process, there is some degree of uncertainty concerning letter identity and letter position. Here, we examined whether this uncertainty also extends to the mapping of letter features onto letters, as predicted by the Bayesian Reader (Norris & Kinoshita, 2012). Indeed, anecdotal evidence suggests that nonwords containing multi-letter homoglyphs (e.g., rn→m), such as docurnent, can be confusable with their base word. We conducted 2 masked priming lexical decision experiments in which the words/nonwords contained a middle letter that was visually similar to a multi-letter homoglyph (e.g., docurnent [rn-m], presiclent [cl-d]). Three types of primes were employed: identity, multi-letter homoglyph, and orthographic control. We used 2 commonly used fonts: Tahoma in Experiment 1 and Calibri in Experiment 2. Results in both experiments showed faster word identification times in the homoglyph condition than in the control condition (e.g., docurnento-DOCUMENTO faster than docusnento-DOCUMENTO). Furthermore, the homoglyph condition produced nearly the same latencies as the identity condition. These findings have important implications not only at a theoretical level (models of printed word recognition) but also at an applied level (Internet administrators/users). (PsycINFO Database Record

Tracking the time course of letter visual-similarity effects during word recognition: A masked priming ERP investigation

“…Therefore, the present experiments confirmed that visual similarity effects during word recognition are not limited to non-letter forms (numbers and symbols; e.g., M4TERI4L or M4TERI4L), but they also occur with visually similar letters (see also Marcet & Perea, 2017, 2018a, for behavioral evidence). Critically, the ERP results in the 230-to 350-ms time window showed that the identity condition and the visually similar condition (e.g., dentist-DENTIST and dentjst-DENTIST) behaved similarly, whereas the visually different primes produced larger negative-going amplitudes.…”

“…Furthermore, the visually similar substituted-letter condition produced word identification times that were only slightly slower than those in the identity condition (see also Marcet & Perea, 2018b, for evidence of this pattern during sentence reading using the boundary technique). Likewise, Marcet and Perea (2018a) found faster lexical decision times on a target word when preceded by a visually similar prime containing a multi-letter homoglyph (docurnent-DOCUMENT, where rn is visually similar to m) than when preceded by an orthographically control prime (e.g., docusnent-DOCUMENT)-again, the visually similar condition yielded word identification times only slightly slower than those in the identity condition.…”

“…There were no significant differences in the number of trials accepted per condition (ID vs. SIM: t(22) = −1.06, p = 0.30; SIM vs. DIS: t(22) = 1.38, p = 0.18; ID vs. DIS: t(22) = 0.19, p = 0.85). As in previous similar studies (Kinoshita et al, 2013;Lupker, Perea, & Davis, 2008;Marcet & Perea, 2017, 2018a, we focused on the word trials, because masked priming effects for nonword trials are absent or minimal.…”

“…For each time window, we performed two separate repeated measures analyses of variance (ANOVA) that included the factors hemisphere, A-P distribution, and type of prime (SIM, DIS, and ID). As in the Marcet and Perea (2017, 2018a, 2018b experiments, we mainly focused on the two novel, theoretically motivated a priori contrasts (i.e., SIM vs. DIS and ID vs. SIM). Nonetheless, for the sake of completeness, Figure 2a displays the ID versus DIS differences in the ERP waves.…”

Jalapeno or jalapeño: Do diacritics in consonant letters modulate visual similarity effects during word recognition?

“…Critically, there is empirical evidence of visual similarity effects in Latin-based orthographies: a target word like DENTIST is responded to faster when briefly preceded by a visually similar substituted-letter prime (dentjst; note that i and j are rated as visually very similar [5.12 of 7] in the Simpson, Mousikou, Montoya, & Defior, 2012, norms) than when preceded by a visually dissimilar substituted-letter prime (dentgst; Kinoshita, Robidoux, Mills, & Norris, 2013;Marcet & Perea, 2017, 2018a; see also Marcet & Perea, 2018b, for evidence with the boundary technique during sentence reading). To examine in detail the time course of the effects of visual similarity during word recognition, Gutiérrez-Sigut, Marcet, and Perea (2019) conducted two masked priming lexical decision experiments using the stimuli from Marcet and Perea (2017) while recording event-related potentials (ERPs).…”