The perceptual span and peripheral cues in reading

Skilled readers read passages that were displayed on a Cathode Ray Tube controlled by a computer. The readers' eye movements were monitored and certain critical words were changed by the computer as the eye was in motion. The experimental technique utilized in the study provided data on how wide the area is from which a reader acquires information during a fixation in silent reading. The results also delineate different types of visual information that are acquired from various areas within the perceptual span. It was found that a reader was able to make a semantic interpretation of a word that began 1–6 character spaces from his fixation point. When he fixated 7–12 character spaces prior to a word, he was able to pick up such gross visual characteristics as word shape and initial and final letters. It was concluded that the skilled reader is able to take advantage of information in the periphery. However, the size of the area from which he does is rather small.     

The internal representation of numbers

A principle of second-order isomorphism asserts that the functional similarities among internal representations parallel the structural similarities among the external objects to which those representations correspond. In accordance with this principle, subjects were asked to rate the similarities of all pairs of the numbers 0 through 9 in each of 24 conditions distinguished by the forms into which they were to be mentally transformed and then judged-including the visual forms of rows of dots and Arabic numerals, the auditory form of spoken English names, and the amodal form of the abstract concepts of the integers themselves. Similarity ratings were found to depend entirely upon the form in which the numbers were to be judged and not at all upon the form in which they were actually presented. Regardless of the form presented, multidimensional scaling solutions for each of the 24 conditions were readily interpretable in terms of structural properties of the form judged-curvature and closure for visual numerals; number of syllables, initial consonant, and vowel phoneme for auditory names; and numerical magnitude, odd-evenness, etc., for abstract concepts. Reanalyses of chronometric data are presented to illustrate how a fuller understanding of human cognitive processes may be attainable by using such structural models of internal representation in conjunction with studies of overt confusion and reaction time.     

Cognitive reference points

Two methods were used to test the hypothesis that natural categories (such as colors, line orientations, and numbers) have reference point stimuli (such as focal colors, vertical and horizontal lines, and numbers that are multiples of 10) in relation to which other stimuli of the category are judged. In Experiment I, subjects placed pairs of stimuli into sentence frames consisting of linguistic “hedges” such as “— is essentially—.” Results were that the supposed reference stimuli were most often placed in the second (reference) slot. In Experiment II, the subject placed a stimulus in physical space to represent his feeling of the psychological distance of that stimulus from another spatially fixed stimulus. Results showed that, when supposed reference stimuli were fixed, other stimuli were placed closer to them than vice versa. The results have substantive implications for the understanding of internal structure of categories and methodological implications for the mapping of reference points, quantification of linguistic intuitions, and the assumption of symmetry in psychological distance judgments.