Cite as:
Brown V, Liversedge S P, White S, Findlay J M, Gilchrist I D, 2000, "Orthographic structure mediates peripheral letter-string identification" Perception 29 ECVP Abstract Supplement

Orthographic structure mediates peripheral letter-string identification

V Brown, S P Liversedge, S White, J M Findlay, I D Gilchrist

There is a general assumption that visual word recognition is automatic and occurs whenever a letter string is perceived (Stroop, 1935 Journal of Experimental Psychology 18 643 - 662). We tested this assumption by manipulating target letter strings across three experiments.

Target strings were words, orthographically legal non-words, or orthographically illegal non-words. The experiments were designed to test the effect of retinal eccentricity of a target string and visual similarity of a distractor string on response latencies. Main effects of visual similarity and eccentricity were found for all experiments. An interaction was found between eccentricity and visual similarity for words and orthographically legal non-words. No interaction was found for orthographically illegal non-words. The results suggest that identification of letter strings is mediated by orthographic structure.

In a further experiment, we examined the influence of orthographic factors on eye-movement latencies. Previous work on eye movements has shown that there is a characteristic pattern of increased saccade latencies (20 - 40 ms) when subjects are presented with simultaneous bilateral targets in different hemifields. This is known as the 'remote distractor effect'. Using this paradigm, we found orthographic effects on saccade onset latencies.

These web-based abstracts are provided for ease of seaching and access, but certain aspects (such as as mathematics) may not appear in their optimum form. For the final published version of this abstract, please see
ECVP 2000 Abstract Supplement (complete) size: 1258 Kb