Some factors affecting tachistoscopic letter recognition

Summary The paper reports a series of studies that attempt to examine the issue of tachistoscopic identification of letter material. In particular a reductionist approach is used to investigate the influence of retinal locus, cerebral dominance, metacontrast, letter symmetry, and ocular dominance on the task. Retinal locus, metacontrast, and ocular dominance were shown to influence letter reportability under the present conditions with, it is argued, retinal locus and metacontrast affecting the integrity of the icon. Evidence is given for the construct of ocular dominance as the eye (dominant) initiating eye movements with the other passively following.     

Disruptive effects of prior information on tachistoscopic recognition

Smith, Haviland, Reder, Brownell, and Adams (1976) found tachistoscopic letter recognition to be disrupted by advance information about possible letter alternatives. An association of “before-disruption” with a bias to respond “same” in same-different judgment led Smith et al. to conclude that incidental mask features corresponding to a precued letter were erroneously incorporated into the target letter decision. Experiments 1 and 2 in the present study failed to replicate the before-disruption effect under conditions similar to those of Smith et al., although precuing produced a strong bias to respond “same.” Similarity between “same” and “different” alternatives was manipulated in Experiment 3 by selecting letter pairs differing in one critical feature (P-R, O-Q, C-G, F-E) for one group of subjects, and re-pairing the same letters (P-G, O-E, C-R, F-Q) for another group. Contrary to Smith et el., precuing interacted significantly with pair similarity, such that before-disruption occurred only with similar alternatives. In contrast, precuing produced equivalent “same-bias” in both groups. The dependence of before-disruption on pair similarity was extended to two-alternative forced-choice recognition in Experiment 4. Together with inconsistencies in the Smith et al. data and more detailed analysis of present recognition errors, the results suggest (1) the before-disruption and same-bias effects of precuing are mediated by separate mechanisms, and (2) before-disruption reflects loss of target letter information rather than direct incorporation of extraneous mask features.     

Sex in lateralized tachistoscopic word recognition

Although a generalized sex difference in lateralization appears to be established, a review of the literature pertaining to lexical tachistoscopic tasks suggests a dissociation by method: females show reduced visual field asymmetries relative to males in lexical decision and naming, but not in word recognition. Here 14 recognition experiments from the author's laboratory are subjected to meta-analysis, and the literature review is confirmed. There is no sex difference is visual field asymmetry for the task, although an overall field difference is found and statistical power is high to find the interaction. Possible reasons for the discrepancy with lexical decision and naming findings are discussed. One possibility is that stress on reaction time in those tasks produces a complex interaction between sex, activation/arousal, and hemispheric differences, which is not found when a less speeded method is used.     

Hemiretinal differences in face recognition: accuracy versus reaction time

A face-recognition task involving monocular presentation of laterally displaced stimuli yielded a nasal hemiretinal advantage for reaction time for correct identifications, but a temporal hemiretinal advantage for accuracy (d'). These hemiretinal effects, in conjunction with eye dominance, could in principle distort or obscure interpretations of hemispheric processing differences obtained with binocular stimulation.     

Cross modality facilitation in tachistoscopic word recognition

In its old form, the logogen model (Morton, 1969) would have predicted extensive cross-model facilitation of tachistoscopic word recognition. An experiment by Winnick and Daniel (1970) violated this prediction by showing no effects on subsequent visual word recognition of naming a picture or filling a definition. The latter results was replicated, and it was also found that pretraining with handwritten words transferred to printed words from 10-45 min later. A further experiment showed no significant transfer from auditory presentation to subsequent visual recognition. A third experiment, designed to minimize the role of conscious guessing strategies showed a significant cross-model transfer. The logogen model was modified substantially in the light of these data. There are now seen to be modality specific input categorization systems which are separate from the output lexicon and which are identified as the site of facilitation in the experiments.     

Order of report and processing in tachistoscopic recognition

Two groups of 12 Ss were shown tachistoscopically 4 letters and 4 numbers. Within these alpha-numeric sequences, three variables were systematically manipulated: grouping of items, initial item, and familiarity of the letter sequences. One group of Ss reported first letters then numbers from each sequence; the other group reported numbers then letters. The results indicated that grouping, redundancy, and order of report had significant effects on letter accuracy but not on number accuracy. These effects were interpreted in terms of processing, particularly the use of spatial and identity information during recognition.     

Neighborhood frequency effects and letter visibility in visual word recognition

Two experiments are described that measured lexical decision latencies and errors to five-letter French words with a single higher frequency orthographic neighbor and control words with no higher frequency neighbors. The higher frequency neighbor differed from the stimulus word by either the second letter (e.g.,astre-autre) or the fourth letter (chope-chose). Neighborhood frequency effects were found to interact with this factor, and significant interference was observed only tochope-type words. The effects of neighborhood frequency were also found to interact with the position of initial fixation in the stimulus word (either the second letter or the fourth letter). Interference was greatly reduced when the initial fixation was on the critical disambiguating letter (i.e., the letterp inchope). Moreover, word recognition was improved when subjects initially fixated the second letter relative to when they initially fixated the fourth letter of a five-letter word, but this second-letter advantage practically disappeared when the stimulus differed from a more frequent word by its fourth letter. The results are interpreted in terms of the interaction between visual and lexical factors in visual word recognition.     

Buffer storage modality and identification time in tachistoscopic recognition

According to Sperling's (1967) model of short-term memory briefly presented masked stimuli are rapidly read into a non-visual Recognition Buffer (the RB model). An alternative interpretation of the data is that the stimulus information is coded into a non-iconic Visual Buffer where it is held while a much slower recognition process takes place (the VB model). The high frequency of errors in experiments with sequentially presented stimuli appears to refute the possibility that recognition is as rapid as suggested by the RB model. However these data may be attributed to variations in effective stimulus duration and stimulus quality rather than to slow recognition time. In an experiment to control for these effects, normal, laterally inverted and spaced digits were presented in a rapid sequence (1-10 items/s) with intervening pattern masks to keep the stimulus/mask interval constant. The recall data showed that order errors increased with rate of presentation but that item errors remained invariant. At the fastest rates of presentation there were fewer order errors for spaced than for coincident digits. It was argued that the results, as a whole, were more consistent with the VB than the RB model and that there is no evidence for identification times as fast as 10-40 ms/item.     

Neighborhood frequency effects and letter visibility in visual word recognition.

Two experiments are described that measured lexical decision latencies and errors to five-letter French words with a single higher frequency orthographic neighbor and control words with no higher frequency neighbors. The higher frequency neighbor differed from the stimulus word by either the second letter (e.g., ASTRE-AUTRE) or the fourth letter (CHOPE-CHOSE). Neighborhood frequency effects were found to interact with this factor, and significant interference was observed only to CHOPE-type words. The effects of neighborhood frequency were also found to interact with the position of initial fixation in the stimulus word (either the second letter or the fourth letter). Interference was greatly reduced when the initial fixation was on the critical disambiguating letter (i.e., the letter P in CHOPE). Moreover, word recognition was improved when subjects initially fixated the second letter relative to when they initially fixated the fourth letter of a five-letter word, but this second-letter advantage practically disappeared when the stimulus differed from a more frequent word by its fourth letter. The results are interpreted in terms of the interaction between visual and lexical factors in visual work recognition.     

The importance of being first: A tachistoscopic study of the contribution of each letter to the recognition of four-letter words

Three studies investigated the effect on the response time for voicing a four-letter word of delaying one of the letters or the entire word for intervals of up to 500 msec. Experiment I found delay of the first letter most detrimental, while delay of the second, third, or fourth letter facilitated performance. Experiment II confirmed these findings and indicated that delay of the entire word produced response times similar to delay of the first letter. Experiment III investigated the possibility that knowledge of the pronunciation of the first letter was the essential factor in facilitating performance when later letters were delayed. It was concluded that when pronunciation of the first letter was known, Ss were able to begin processing the word immediately.