THE ENHANCEMENT EFFECT IN LETTER DETECTION - FURTHER EVIDENCE FOR THESTRUCTURAL MODEL OF READING

According to the structural model of reading (A. Koriat & S. N. Greenb erg, 1994), the extraction of structure leads the way to the analysis of meaning. Consistent with this model, previous letter-detection stud ies have documented an inordinately high rate of letter omissions in f unction morphemes, suggesting that the cognitive representation of fun ction morphemes is diminished once they have been utilized to set phra se structure. The present study revealed a new and complementary enhan cement effect: Letter detection in content morphemes that immediately followed functors was superior to that of content morphemes positioned elsewhere in the text. Together these effects suggest an on-line figu re-ground representation of text in which structural elements recede a s semantic elements are pushed to the foreground.