Tr. Jordan et al., The illusory-letters phenomenon: An illustration of graphemic restoration in visual word recognition, PERCEPTION, 28(11), 1999, pp. 1413-1416
We present a demonstration of word perception in which stimuli containing v
ery few letters (just 50% of their original number) are presented for unlim
ited durations and yet are seen unequivocally as complete words. The phenom
enon suggests that recognition of words can be achieved even when perceptio
n of their component letters is prevented.