THE WORD-DETECTION EFFECT - SOPHISTICATED GUESSING OR PERCEPTUAL ENHANCEMENT

Subjects discriminate letters in words better than letters in nonwords . The sophisticated guessing hypothesis attributes this word advantage to a guessing strategy. In words, the possible letters at each letter position are constrained by letters at other positions, whereas lette rs in nonwords are not restricted in this manner. A critical test of t his hypothesis is that if subjects are given explicit knowledge of the letters in nonwords before the trial, the word advantage would disapp ear. We investigated the effect of preknowledge of the alternatives in the word-detection effect. In the word-detection effect, subjects dec ide which of two character strings contains letters and which contains pseudoletters. In four experiments, subjects were more accurate with words than with nonwords, and subjects were more accurate when they we re told the word or nonword before the trial. However, even with forek nowledge of the alternatives, subjects were more accurate with words t han with nonwords.