DETECTING PHONEMES AND LETTERS IN TEXT - INTERACTIONS BETWEEN DIFFERENT TYPES AND LEVELS OF PROCESSES

In six experiments, subjects detected phonemes or letters in text pres ented auditorily or visually. Experiments 1 and 2 provided support for the hypothesis that a mismatch between the phoneme and letter represe ntations of a target leads to detection errors. In addition, visual wo rd unitization processes were implicated. Experiments 3 and 4 provided support for the hypothesis that the Gestalt goodness of pattern affec ted detection errors when subjects searched for letters. Experiments 5 and 6 demonstrated that the effects of unitization on the detection o f letters in common words were decreased by altering the familiar conf iguration of the test words. The combined results of all six experimen ts lead to the conclusion that both visual and phonetic processes infl uence letter detection, that these processes communicate through a typ e of cross-checking, and that there are at least two levels of visual (and perhaps of phonetic) processing involved in the letter detection task.