Visual comparison of words and random letter strings: Effects of number and position of letters different

Abstract

Ss classified tetragrams as either "same" or "different". Stimuli were either words or consonant strings. In the case of different pairs, the number and position of letters different were controlled. Words were compared faster than random strings under all conditions. Consistent effects of the number and position of letters different suggest that word superiority is not due to phonemic recoding. For both words and consonant strings "same" RT to a given pair was faster when it was from a block in which "different" pairs had three rather than one letter different. This suggests that the wholistic identity reporter involves a criterion process sensitive to the magnitude of expected differences. Different RTs were faster in all conditions for three-letter different pairs rather than one-letter different pairs, ruling out a fixed order self-terminating search process for "different" decisions.

Self-termination in same–different judgments: Multiletter comparison with simultaneous and sequential presentation.

“…Third, different RT increased when the differing letter was placed toward the right (see Table 2). This serial position effect, which also was found in previous multiletter comparison studies, both with sequential presentation (Bamber, 1969(Bamber, ,1972 and simultaneous presentation (Henderson & Henderson, 1975;Kroll & Hershenson, 1980), indicates that the self-terminating scan was predominantly left to right.…”

Familiarity effects in visual information processing.

“…Hock, Gordon, and Whitehurst (1974) found comparison to be slowed when the objects in a pair of pictures were arranged in a novel, implausible manner; rearranging the objects, however, may have disrupted performance simply by increasing the visual complexity of the scenes. Faster comparisons of pairs of words or sequentially redundant pseudowords than of nonwords have been found by Egeth and Blecker (1971), Eichelman (1970), Henderson (1974), Henderson and Henderson (1975), Schindler, Well, and Pollatsek (1974), Pollatsek, Well, and Schindler (in press), Well, Pollatsek, and Schindler (1975), Bruder and Silverman (1974), Goldberg (Note 2), Baron (1974), and Barren and Pittenger (1974). Hershenson (1972, Experiments 2 and 3), however, pitted pronounceable against nonpronounceable nonwords and found no familiarity effect.…”

Serial, parallel, or holistic identification of single words in the two visual fields?

“…However, in the two present experiments, words rather than discrete letters were being matched, and at a memory rather than a purely perceptual (i.e., simultaneous presentation) level. Henderson and Henderson (1975) presented uppercase (unlike our lowercase) words and letter strings across fixation, with nontarget items differing from targets at various letter positions. They, too, found that targets were identified faster than nontargets.…”