LACK OF WORD-SUPERIORITY EFFECT IN PROCESSING LETTER FEATURES

Letter recognition is typically faster in words than ih nonwords. In t his study, we tested the word-superiority effect obtained when either subletter features or misalignment of letters had to be detected. Subj ects were presented with both high- and low-frequency words and with l egal and illegal nonwords. Space among the letters varied. In the regu lar space condition, letters within a string were separated by normal spaces; in the irregular space condition, letters were separated by no rmal spaces, small spaces, or large spaces. In Experiment 1, subjects were required to detect the presence of a bold segment contained in on e of the letters of the string. No word-superiority effect was obtaine d. Furthermore, spacing affected neither latencies nor response accura cy. In Experiment 2, subjects were required to detect the presence of a letter misaligned with respect to the others. Again, no word-superio rity effect was obtained. However, spacing affected this task, irregul arly spaced strings being responded to more slowly and less accurately than regularly spaced strings. The results indicate that at the first stages of analysis, words and non-words are similarly coded. The patt ern obtained is consistent with a multistage model of word recognition in which parallel feature extraction processes are followed by a leve l at which spatial relationships are computed and by a third level at which abstract grapheme identity is recovered from letter shapes.