Detection of intraword and interword letter repetition: A test of the word unitization hypothesis

Abstract

Do words, as familiar units or gestalts, tend to swallow up and conceal their letter components (Pillsbury, 1897)? Letters typically are detected faster and more accurately in words than in nonwords (i.e., scrambled collections of letters), and in more frequent words than in less frequent words. However, a word advantage at encoding, where the representation of the string is formed, might compensate for, and thus mask, a word disadvantage at decoding and comparison, where the component letters of the representation are accessed and compared with the target letter. To better reveal any such word disadvantage, a task was used in this study that increased the amount of letter processing. Subjects judged whether a letter was repeated within a six-letter word or a nonword (Experiment 1; intraword letter repetition) or was repeated between two adjacent unrelated six-letter words or nonwords (Experiment 2; interword letter repetition). Contrary to Pillsbury's word unitization hypothesis, both types of letter repetition (intraword and interword) were detected faster and just as accurately with words as with nonwords. In Experiment 2, however, interword letter repetition was detected less accurately on common words (but not on rare words or third-order pseudowords) than on the corresponding nonwords. Thus, although the familiar word does not deny access to its own component letters, it does make their comparison with letters from other words more difficult. Do words reveal or conceal their component letters? Some authors have argued that the word, as a familiar unit or gestalt, ought to conceal its letters. According to Pillsbury (1897), in a brief presentation of a word, "the rush of recognition may beso violent that the letters themselves are entirely neglected-forgotten, or not seen at all" (p. 378). Thus, the word may tend to overshadow or swallow up its letter components.Letters need not be seen at all if words are recognized or encoded in a holistic manner, that is, "on the basis of supraletter features from units larger than the letter" (Proctor & Healy, 1985, p. 287). Besner, Davelaar, Alcott, andParry (1984) reviewed the evidence and concluded that the single word is not recognized on the basis of transletter features or the outline shape of the word: "letter recognition is ... a necessary preliminary to word recognition" (p. 132). But even if "with highly familiar words such as the or and, identification often can occur at the word level prior to complete letter identification" (Proctor & Healy, 1985, p. 287), that would not necessarily block or retard subsequent access to the letter contents, which is the key issue here. "The crucial assumption of the unitization hypotheses ... is that once a larger unit is identified, the processing of its component letter units stops, even if the letters have not yet been identiThe author is grateful to Philip A. Allen and Alice F. Healy for helpful comments on an earlier version of this report. Requests for reprints should be sent to Lester E. Krueger, Human PerformanceCent...

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