On coding the position of letters in words: a test of two models

Open-bigram and spatial-coding schemes provide different accounts of how letter position is encoded by the brain during visual word recognition. Open-bigram coding involves an explicit representation of order based on letter pairs, while spatial coding involves a comparison function operating over r...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published inExperimental psychology Vol. 59; no. 2; p. 109
Main Authors Whitney, Carol, Bertrand, Daisy, Grainger, Jonathan
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Germany 01.01.2012
Subjects
Attention
Humans
Language
Linguistics
Models, Psychological
Pattern Recognition, Visual
Photic Stimulation
Reaction Time
Reading
Vocabulary
Online AccessGet more information

Cover

More Information
Summary:Open-bigram and spatial-coding schemes provide different accounts of how letter position is encoded by the brain during visual word recognition. Open-bigram coding involves an explicit representation of order based on letter pairs, while spatial coding involves a comparison function operating over representations of individual letters. We identify a set of priming conditions (subset primes and reversed interior primes) for which the two types of coding schemes give opposing predictions, hence providing the opportunity for strong scientific inference. Experimental results are consistent with the open-bigram account, and inconsistent with the spatial-coding scheme.
ISSN:2190-5142
DOI:10.1027/1618-3169/a000132