Word and nonword superiority effects in a letter detection task

Staller, Joshua D.; Lappin, Joseph S.

doi:10.3758/bf03206109

Cited by 13 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 31 publications

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“…White (1977) controlled for the physical factor by printing each of the six elements in a display in a different typeface or type size, and he obtained no category effect. Staller and Lappin (1979) found that search for consonant targets was just as fast through all-consonant strings as through consonant-vowel strings when the two distractor sets were equated on physical features. Krueger and Hettinger (in press) found no category effect for odd vs. even digits, presumably because the two sets share similar physical features (Levine, 1977).…”

Section: Subjectsmentioning

confidence: 98%

The category effect in visual search depends on physical rather than conceptual differences

Krueger

1984

Perception & Psychophysics

111

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Is a target letter (digit) more readily detected in a digit (letter) background because of conceptual-level differences between letters and digits or because of physical-level differences? When letters and digits were matched on physical features, both for the target set and the background set, no letter vs. digit category effect was found, With physical differences eliminated, search was faster and more accurate for letter than for digit targets and distractors, presumably because of the greater familiarity of letters. Presenting the same characters in normal and mirrorreversed orientation, which also minimized featural differences between categories, produced only a small normal vs. reversed category effect. In a normal background, a reversed target lost much more from its unfamiliarity than it gained from mismatching the background. The present results indicate that the category effect vanishes when only conceptual level differences are present.Physical differences can greatly speed letter or digit search (e.g., a Z is found easily in a field of curved letters), perhaps because they permit target detection to occur at the preattentive level (Neisser, 1967). Higher level, or conceptual, properties of the background also may greatly affect target detection, however. In the category effect, for example, a target letter (digit) is detected more readily in a digit (letter) background (Ingling, 1972;Jonides & Gleitman, 1972). By minimizing between-category physical differences, the present study tests whether the category effect is a conceptual-level phenomenon.Whether the category effect is truly conceptual, as its name implies, has important implications for models of early processing. Merikle (1980) found a partial-report advantage over whole report when subjects were cued by category (letters, digits), and he concluded that iconic memory was not precategorical. However, Merikle did not control for structural features that might distinguish letters from digits; for example, "symmetry about some axis is more prevalent among letters than digits; on many type faces, letters tend to be wider than digits" (Jonides & Gleitman, 1972, p, 457). Digits have a greater balance of linear and curvilinear features than do uppercase letters, of which 58070 contain only linear elements (Keren, 1977;McCarthy, 1976McCarthy, , 1979.One problem for the featural explanation, though, is that although the name of a shape seemingly should This study was supported in part by National Institute of Mental Health Grant MH3229S. The author is grateful to Lori Collner and Mary Pejeau for assistance in collecting the data and to Jonathan Baron, John Duncan, John M. Flach, Nancy Ingling, John Jonides, Robert Proctor, and Ronald G. Shapiro for useful discussions and comments. Requests for reprints should be sent to Lester E. Krueger, Human Performance Center, Ohio State University, 404-B West 17th Avenue, Columbus, Ohio 43210. not affect its physical distinctiveness in various contexts, Jonides and Gleitman (1972) did find a category effect for...

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Section: Subjectsmentioning

confidence: 98%

The category effect in visual search depends on physical rather than conceptual differences

Krueger

1984

Perception & Psychophysics

111

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“…Experiment 2 tested for this, as well as for a distinction between early (A to J) and late (Q to Z) letters. Other subsets of numbers and letters, for example, vowels and consonants (Staller & Lappin, 1979), also may be highly distinctive. Experiment 2 also tested for the effect of background order, using regular, reverse, and random orders (see Table 1), but did not adjust the letter sequences to equalize bigram frequency.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Alphanumerical order and category effects in visual search

Krueger

Hettinger

1984

Bull. Psychon. Soc.

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“…were able to demonstrate a word superiority effect with target precuing by introducing uncertainty about the target's position in the stimulus array. But Staller and Lappin (1979) argued that the graphic similarity between target and context letters was not adequately controlled in Carr et a1. When graphic similarity was equated across words and nonwords, Staller and Lappin did not find a word superiority effect.…”

Section: Specifically Thompson and Massaro Found That Thementioning

confidence: 99%