6533b7d8fe1ef96bd126b713

RESEARCH PRODUCT

On the role of the upper part of words in lexical access: evidence with masked priming.

Montserrat ComesañaManuel PereaAna Paula SoaresCarmen Moret-tatayCarmen Moret-tatay

subject

Orthographic encodingPhysiologyLexical decisionmedia_common.quotation_subjectDecision MakingRepetition primingSocial SciencesExperimental and Cognitive Psychology050105 experimental psychology03 medical and health sciences0302 clinical medicinePhysiology (medical)PerceptionRepetition PrimingLexical decision taskReaction TimeHumans0501 psychology and cognitive sciencesGeneral Psychologymedia_commonScience & TechnologyMental lexicon05 social sciencesLexical accessGeneral MedicineLinguisticsSemanticsNeuropsychology and Physiological PsychologyReadingVisual PerceptionMasked primingPsychologyPriming (psychology)Perceptual Masking030217 neurology & neurosurgeryWord (group theory)Cognitive psychology

description

More than 100 years ago, Huey (1908) indicated that the upper part of words was more relevant for perception than the lower part. Here we examined whether mutilated words, in their upper/lower portions (e.g., , , , ), can automatically access their word units in the mental lexicon. To that end, we conducted four masked repetition priming experiments with the lexical decision task. Results showed that mutilated primes produced a sizeable masked repetition priming effect. Furthermore, the magnitude of the masked repetition priming effect was greater when the upper part of the primes was preserved than when the lower portion was preserved –this was the case not only when the mutilated words were presented in lowercase but also when the mutilated words were presented in uppercase. Taken together, these findings suggest that the front-end of computational models of visual-word recognition should be modified to provide a more realistic account at the level of letter features.

10.1080/17470218.2011.636151https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22293014