Can “words” be processed as integrated units?

Abstract

Three experiments examined the information processing of letters embedded 'within one-syllable words and similar unpronounceable sequences. A speeded discrimination task was used to detect processing differences between words and nonwords in a situation where both the identity and position of critical display information was known to subjects before stimulus presentation. Results indicated that word pairs differing by two letters were more quickly discriminated than two words differing in a single letter, while nonword pairs differing in two letters were discriminated no faster than two nonwords differing in a single letter. A further comparison showed a performance advantage for words over nonwords in a condensation task that forced a scan of stimulus letters for correct responding. These results suggest that familiarity affects information processing at a perceptuallevel, and are incompatible with theories suggesting that familiarity effects are due to inferential factors following letter feature analysis.

The role of configuration in the identification of visually degraded words

“…(2) The task was one of word identification in which each word in the set was actually pronounced. In the previous work of both Garner (1981) and Silverman (1976Silverman ( , 1977, subjects were never required to use the actual word as a response, but they used either a manual response or a card classification. The use of word identification in the present experiments was intended to increase the likelihood that whole-word properties would be used by requiring a whole-word response.…”

“…Analysis of errors showed no tendency for the words to be used holistically, since when errors were made, they tended to be made with responses differing only in a single letter position. Later, Silverman (1976Silverman ( , 1977 used such three-letter words and found some evidence for holistic perception with discrimination tasks of the sort used by Garner (1974Garner ( , 1978b to investigate integrality and separability of stimulus dimensions. Specifically, he found some increased speed of discrimination to pairs of words differing in both the first and third letter positions compared with pairs differing in only a single letter position; in condensation classification tasks requiring two words to be put into each class, but with neither the first nor the third letter being the same for a given class, words were classified faster than nonwords.…”

“…In an attempt to extend Silverman's (1976) work, Garner (1981 used words that varied the amount of configural information available and added a focusing task to those used by Silverman, a task in which one word is classified against the other three. Several word sets were used, words that when reversed produced nonwords (but having, of course, the same component letters) and words that when used in lowercase could give maximum variation in configurations of the whole words, even though giving little variation in configuration when used in uppercase.…”

Are visually presented one-syllable words integral stimuli?

“…Thus, the WSE is caused by a differentiation between words and nonwords in an early "unitization" process, with measured performance differences due to the size of the respective perceptual units. Silverman (1976) tested the Spoehr and Smith (1973) theory by attempting empirical measurement of the perceptual unit size for words and nonwords. The method employed was based on Garner's (1974) defmitions of integral and separable stimuli.…”

“…To see if one-syllable words are processed as single units, Silverman (1976) modified the Biederman and Checkosky (1970) speeded discrimination method for use with letter sequence stimuli. A letter was arbitrarily defined as a feature, and subjects were required to discriminate between two sequences differing in either one or two letters.…”