The effects of interletter spacing in visual-word recognition

Abstract

Despite the importance of determining the effects of interletter spacing on visual-word recognition, this issue has often been neglected in the literature. The goal of the present study is to shed some light on this topic. The rationale is that a thin increase in interletter spacing, as in c a s i n o, may reduce lateral interference among internal letters without destroying a word's integrity and/or allow a more precise encoding of a word's letter positions. Here we examined whether identification times for word stimuli in a lexical decision task were faster when the target word had a slightly wider than default interletter spacing value relative to the default settings (e.g., c a s i n o vs. casino). In Experiment 1, we examined whether interletter spacing interacted with word-frequency, whereas in Experiment 2, we examined whether interletter spacing interacted with word length. Results showed that responses to words using a thin increase in interletter spacing were faster than the responses to words using the default settings-regardless of word-frequency and word length. Thus, interletter spacing plays an important role at modulating the identification of visually presented words.

Effects of intraword and interword spacing on eye movements during reading: Exploring the optimal use of space in a line of text

“…First, these results reconfirm that subtle low-level font characteristics do influence eye movement behavior during reading Rayner, Slattery, & Bélanger, 2010;. We found that wider spacing results in shorter average fixation durations, consistent with the linear facilitative effects reported by Perea et al (2010) and Perea and Gomez (2012) using the lexical decision task. While not statistically significant with regard tothe other spacing conditions, gaze durations on target words presented in Times New Roman were shortest in the +1/2 pixel condition, which also agrees with Perea et al and Perea and Gomez.…”

“…There are reports of facilitation in lexical decision tasks with subtle increases to intraword space (Perea & Gomez, 2012). However, as Perea, Moret-Tatay, and Gomez (2010) noted, the results of studies that use subtle manipulations of increased intraword spacing are somewhat inconsistent, probably due to the fact that the amount of space added between letters varied across the studies, as did the fonts used in the studies. Fonts can differ quite a bit in their default intraword spacing.…”

“…Figure 1 shows a sentence across these four spacing conditions for each font. This manipulation is far more subtle than the one used by Paterson and Jordan (2010) and similar to the one used by Perea et al (2010). Note that this manipulation applied to all characters, including the interword space.…”

“…Therefore, it is possible that the spacing manipulation we employed in Experiment 1 would affect these two fonts differently. An added benefit of using Times New Roman is that this is the font used by Perea et al (2010) and Perea and Gomez (2012), who found facilitation with increased intraword spacing in single-word recognition.…”

Interword and interletter spacing effects during reading revisited: Interactions with word and font characteristics.

“…Perea, et al (2011), examined the impact that a slight increase of inter-letter spacing had on Spanish word recognition in the lexical decision task (LDT). They used the Times New Roman font with either default spacing or a small amount additional spacing (+1.2 pts).…”