Recognition of words and of component letters of stimuli were examined
in a letter-by-letter reader. Frequency and neighborhood density effe
cts are present in word recognition but not in letter identification.
There was no difference between single-letter reading times for words
and nonwords, and there was no correlation between reading times for w
ords and for individual letters off the same stimuli. LBL reading does
not exclusively rely on sequential letter identification. Rather, LBL
patients also have access to a whole-word procedure.