Age changes in the missing-letter effect revisited

When participants search for a target letter while reading, they make more omissions if the target letter is embedded in frequent function words than in less frequent content words. Reflecting developmental changes in component language and literacy skills, the size of this effect increases with age. With adults, the missing-letter effect is due to both word function and word frequency. With children, it is unclear whether the growing size of the missing-letter effect across development is due to a larger effect of word function, word frequency, or both because previous studies with children seeking to isolate the influence of word frequency and word function suffer from important methodological limitations. With these methodological limitations eliminated (Experiments 1 and 2), performance in a letter detection task was assessed for children in Grades 1, 2, 3, 4, and 7 as well as for undergraduate students. The results revealed that the influence of word function increases with age, whereas the effect of frequency is fairly stable across ages. Furthermore, normative predictability data collected in Experiment 3 revealed that third graders and undergraduate students were equally good at predicting function slots in a sentence.     

The impact of familiarization strategies on the missing-letter effect

When reading a text and searching for a target letter, readers make more omissions of the target letter if it is embedded in frequent function words than if it is in rare content words. While word frequency effects are consistently found, few studies have examined the impacts of passage familiarity on the missing-letter effect and studies that have present conflicting evidence. The present study examines the effects of passage familiarity, as well as the impacts of passage familiarization strategy promoting surface or deep encoding, on the missing-letter effect. Participants were familiarized with a passage by retyping a text, replacing all common nouns with synonyms, or generating a text on the same topic as that of the original text, and then completed a letter search task on the familiar passage as well as an unfamiliar passage. In Experiment 1, when both familiar and unfamiliar passages use the same words, results revealed fewer omissions for the retyping and synonyms conditions. However, in Experiment 2, when different words are used in both types of texts, no effect of familiarization strategy was observed. Furthermore, the missing-letter effect is maintained in all conditions, adding support to the robustness of the effect regardless of familiarity with the text.     

The influence of word function in the missing-letter effect: Further evidence from French

When asked to detect target letters while reading continuous text, subjects miss more letters in highly common function words than in less common content words. This is known as themissing-letter effect. According to the structural account, the higher omission rates for frequent function words are attributable to their role in supporting the extraction of phrase structure, after which they become lost in the transition from structure to meaning. This implies that word function in and of itself should affect letter detection accuracy. This issue was examined in four experiments while controlling for a number of confounded factors associated with another influential model: the unitization account. The first experiment extended the missing-letter effect to the French language. The second showed that letter detection is influenced by slight variations in the function assumed by the same word, such as when it is used as a definite article as opposed to a pronoun. This effect was observed even when the frequency of the orthographic pattern and the syllable stress patterns were controlled. In the last two experiments, a control was added for another factor: frequency of word meaning. The results indicate that word function contributes to the missing-letter effect over and above what is contributed by frequency of word meaning.     

Influence of parafoveal processing on the missing-letter effect

According to the parafoveal-processing hypothesis, letters are more often missed in function words than in content words because the former are more likely to be identified in the parafovea, where letter processing is not available. Contrary to previous demonstrations, more omissions occurred in function words than in content words when parafoveal processing was not available because words were displayed in column format, text was read through a 5-letter window, or words were presented 1 at a time on a computer screen. In all experiments, impeding parafoveal processing decreased omission rates for function but not for content words. In the last experiment, direct monitoring of eye movements revealed that, for both fixated and skipped words, letters in function words are missed more often than content words. These results are best interpreted within a model including the structural precedence hypothesis and stressing the importance of visual factors.     

Direct assessments of the processing time hypothesis for the missing-letter effect

When participants search for a target letter while reading, they make more omissions if the target letter is embedded in frequently used words or in the most frequent meaning of a polysemic word. According to the processing time hypothesis, this occurs because familiar words and meanings are identified faster, leaving less time for letter identification. Contrary to the predictions of the processing time hypothesis, with a rapid serial visual presentation procedure, participants were slower at detecting target letters for more frequent words or the most frequent meaning of a word (Experiments 1 and 2) or at detecting the word itself instead of a target letter (Experiment 3). In Experiments 4 and 5, participants self-initiated the presentation of each word, and the same pattern of results was observed as in Experiments 1 and 3. Positive correlations were also found between omission rate and response latencies.     

Eye movements as direct tests of the GO model for the missing-letter effect

When asked to detect target letters while reading a text, participants miss more letters in frequently occurring function words than in less frequent content words. To account for this pattern of results, known as the missing-letter effect, Greenberg, Healy, Koriat, and Kreiner proposed the guidance-organization (GO) model, which integrates the two leading models of the missing-letter effect while incorporating innovative assumptions based on the literature on eye movements during reading. The GO model was evaluated by monitoring the eye movements of participants while they searched for a target letter in a continuous text display. Results revealed the usual missing-letter effect, and many empirical benchmark effects in eye movement literature were observed. However, contrary to the predictions of the GO model, response latencies were longer for function words than for content words. Alternative models are discussed that can accommodate both error and response latency data for the missing-letter effect.     

One missing-letter effect: two methods of assessment.

When participants search for a target letter while reading, they make more omissions if the target letter is embedded in frequent function words than in less frequent content words. This effect is usually observed with a paper and pencil procedure. It has been shown that a similar pattern is observed using a rapid serial visual presentation procedure in which words appear one at a time on a computer screen. It has been questioned, however, whether the two methods tap the same cognitive processes. Item-based correlations between the paper and pencil and the rapid serial visual presentation procedure were high and not significantly different from reliability estimates of either procedure. It is concluded that both procedures highlight the same cognitive processes that are responsible for the missing-letter effect.     

The foreperiod effect revisited

This paper explores four factors which could be important in accounting for the discrepant results which have previously been obtained with respect to the effect of foreperiod duration on reaction time (RT). In some studies a clear effect of foreperiod duration on auditory RT has been found, in contrast to a recent finding that foreperiod duration affected visual RT but not auditory RT. By means of two experiments, the effects of practice, time-on-task, reaction task (a-reaction versus selective reaction) and signal intensity were studied. The latter variable appears to be the principal determinant of the discrepant results in that there is an interaction between signal intensity, foreperiod duration and modality. The results fit the hypothesis that signals beyond a given intensity exert an immediate arousing effect which counteracts the foreperiod effect.     

The interaction of word frequency and word class: a test of the GO model's account of the missing-letter effect

When asked to detect target letters while reading a text, participants miss more letters in frequent function words than in less frequent content words. In this phenomenon, known as the missing-letter effect, two factors covary: word frequency and word class. According to the GO model, there should be an interaction between word class and word frequency with more omissions for function than for content words only among high-frequency words. This pattern would be due to the fact that function words could only assume a structure-supporting role if they are identified rapidly, which is only possible for high-frequency words. These predictions were tested by assessing omission rate for frequent and rare function and content words. Results lend support to the GO model with more omissions for frequent than for rare words, and more omissions for the function than for the content word among high-frequency words, but not among low-frequency words. These results were observed both in English (Experiment 1) and in French (Experiment 2).     

The interaction of word frequency and word class: A test of the GO model's account of the missing-letter effect

When asked to detect target letters while reading a text, participants miss more letters in frequent function words than in less frequent content words. In this phenomenon, known as the missing-letter effect, two factors covary: word frequency and word class. According to the GO model, there should be an interaction between word class and word frequency with more omissions for function than for content words only among high-frequency words. This pattern would be due to the fact that function words could only assume a structure-supporting role if they are identified rapidly, which is only possible for high-frequency words. These predictions were tested by assessing omission rate for frequent and rare function and content words. Results lend support to the GO model with more omissions for frequent than for rare words, and more omissions for the function than for the content word among high-frequency words, but not among low-frequency words. These results were observed both in English (Experiment 1) and in French (Experiment 2).     

The Eriksen flanker effect revisited.

Four studies are reported on the potential role of perceptual interference in a standard Eriksen flanker task. In the first study, incongruent flanker letters showed the usual effect on choice reaction time (CRT) to the target letter but had no effect on the visual fixation time (VFT) needed to distinguish target and flankers. In the second experiment, the effect of incongruent flankers was studied in the context of a same-different response in regard to the target letter and a subsequently presented single letter. The effect of incongruent flankers vanished at an interstimulus interval of 200 ms. In Experiment 3, the same-different task was used in the paradigm of the functional visual field with a target-flankers combination as stimulus on the left (SL) and a single letter as stimulus on the right side (SR) of the visual field. Flankers did neither affect VFT nor the same-different CRT suggesting that target selection may proceed during the saccade from SL to SR. In Experiment 4 effects were studied of flanker-to-target and target-to-single-letter similarity. Flanker-to-target similarity did neither affect VFT nor same-different CRT but target-to-single-letter similarity prolonged same-different CRT. Together, the results suggest parallel perceptual processing of target and flankers, followed by competition of responses to the target and to the incongruent flankers. In line with earlier research, processes of response selection and response competition appear not to be tied to VFT but to proceed in parallel with the saccade from SL to SR.     

Personality and performance on a missing-letter measure of perceptual defence

Fifty-two Ss were required to make complete words from 20 neutral and 20 unpleasant ‘target’ words whose alternate letters had been removed. The four personality scales from the EPQ and the Psychoticism scale from the unpublished PEN inventory were employed as independent variables in repeated-measures analyses of variance in which the dependent variable was the number of neutral or bad target words produced in the missing-letter task. A significant two-way interaction was obtained between PEN Psychoticism and performance on the task, such that Ss scoring low on the personality scale hit significantly more neutral targets than Ss scoring high on the scale. These results did not support previous studies on the relationship between personality and perceptual defence and were interpreted within the framework provided by Mednick, whereby schizophrenia is characterized by a flattening of associative hierarchies.     

The influence of word frequency on the transposed-phoneme priming effect

Speech input like [byt] has been shown to facilitate not only the subsequent processing of an identical target word /byt/ but also that of a target word /tyb/ that contains the same phonemes in a different order. Using the short-term phonological priming paradigm, we examined the role of lexical representations in driving the transposed-phoneme priming effect by manipulating lexical frequency. Results showed that the transposed-phoneme priming effect occurs when targets have a higher frequency than primes, but not when they have a lower frequency. Our findings thus support the view that the transposed-phoneme priming effect results from partial activation of the target word’s lexical representation during prime processing. More generally, our study provides further evidence for a role for position-independent phonemes in spoken word recognition.

     

The influence of working memory on the anger superiority effect

The anger superiority effect shows that an angry face is detected more efficiently than a happy face. However, it is still controversial whether attentional allocation to angry faces is a bottom-up process or not. We investigated whether the anger superiority effect is influenced by top-down control, especially working memory (WM). Participants remembered a colour and then searched for differently coloured facial expressions. Just holding the colour information in WM did not modulate the anger superiority effect. However, when increasing the probabilities of trials in which the colour of a target face matched the colour held in WM, participants were inclined to direct attention to the target face regardless of the facial expression. Moreover, the knowledge of high probability of valid trials eliminated the anger superiority effect. These results suggest that the anger superiority effect is modulated by top-down effects of WM, the probability of events and expectancy about these probabilities.     

The influence of working memory load on the Simon effect

The contribution of spatial and verbal working memory (WM) to the processing of stimulus location in the Simon task was examined in two experiments. Subjects performed the Simon task in single- and dual-task conditions. In the dual-task conditions, individuals first encoded the locations of four boxes/pseudocharacters or the identity of seven characters in memory, then responded to the color of a Simon stimulus, and finally received a test for the WM set. The Simon effect was insensitive to spatial WM load and was abolished by verbal WM load. These data reveal a role of verbal WM in the processing of spatial location in the Simon task. In addition, the data are inconsistent with dual-route models of the Simon effect and may support response discrimination accounts of the mechanisms underlying the processing of spatial location in the Simon task.     

Colavita dominance effect revisited: the effect of semantic congruity

To investigate the effect of semantic congruity on audiovisual target responses, participants detected a semantic concept that was embedded in a series of rapidly presented stimuli. The target concept appeared as a picture, an environmental sound, or both; and in bimodal trials, the audiovisual events were either consistent or inconsistent in their representation of a semantic concept. The results showed faster detection latencies to bimodal than to unimodal targets and a higher rate of missed targets when visual distractors were presented together with auditory targets, in comparison to auditory targets presented alone. The findings of Experiment 2 showed a cross-modal asymmetry, such that visual distractors were found to interfere with the accuracy of auditory target detection, but auditory distractors had no effect on either the speed or the accuracy of visual target detection. The biased-competition theory of attention (Desimone & Duncan Annual Review of Neuroscience 18: 1995; Duncan, Humphreys, & Ward Current Opinion in Neurobiology 7: 255–261 1997) was used to explain the findings because, when the saliency of the visual stimuli was reduced by the addition of a noise filter in Experiment 4, visual interference on auditory target detection was diminished. Additionally, the results showed faster and more accurate target detection when semantic concepts were represented in a visual rather than an auditory format.     

The perception of number from the separability of the stimulus: The Stroop effect revisited

The literature on numerical perception is reviewed from the standpoint of research on selective attention, and predictions are made concerning the dimensional interaction between physical and numerical size of numerals. We manipulated stimulus differences to make the classification of numerical value slightly better (Experiment 1), substantially better (Experiment 2), or worse (Experiments 3–4) than classification of physical size. Garner, Stroop, and redundancy effects were used to gauge the degree of interactive processing. For nearly matched discriminability, both number and size appeared separable when the dimensions were varied orthogonally, but showed Stroop interference and redundancy gain when the dimensions were varied in a correlative fashion. When mismatched, asymmetric Garner and Stroop effects emerged in orthogonal contexts along with Stroop and redundancy gains in correlative contexts. These findings define a unique relation: Numerical value and physical size were optionally separable dimensions. We conclude that a magnitude representation is not mandatory for the perception of numerals. Our conclusions offer a new perspective for understanding both numerical perception and the Stroop phenomenon itself.     

Insight problems revisited: The influence of cognitive styles and experience on creative problem solving

The joint influence of cognitive style and prior experience on creative problem solving was examined using the Two‐String and the Hatrack insight problems. The study involved 44 male and 43 female Norwegian students aged 17 to 21 years. In three out of four cases the results supported the hypothesis that there is a joint effect between assimilative and explorative strategy preferences and degree of experience in their influence on performance. Explorers mainly performed better when prior experience was low (high task novelty) and assimilators mainly performed better when prior experience was high (low novelty). However, this pattern was reversed for females on the Hatrack problem. There was also a significant curvilinear relationship between experience and the composite problem‐solving score. Implications for theories on the role of experience in creative problem solving as well as limitations of this study are discussed.     

The influence of teacher expectations on student achievement in physical education classes: Pygmalion revisited

The main purpose of this study was to explore the relation between teacher expectations and student achievement in physical education classes, in the light of three complementary hypotheses. Student achievement may confirm teacher expectations because these expectations create self‐fulfilling prophecies, create perceptual biases, or accurately predict, without influencing, student achievement (Jussim, 1989 ). Another purpose was to examine the mediating role played by students' perceived ability in the teacher expectancy process. Study data were obtained from 173 students and 7 teachers. Path analysis revealed that teacher expectations have weak self‐fulfilling effects, strongly predicted student achievement mainly because they are accurate, and have no biasing effects on teacher judgements. Results also show evidence concerning the role of partial mediator of perceived student ability in the confirmation process of teacher expectations. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.