Word centre is misperceived

Normal readers were asked to mark the middle of visually presented words. T hey made systematic errors toward the left, indicating an overestimation of the length of the beginning of a word. The number of characters determines the size of this error. The bias extended to pseudowords, letter strings, and symbols, but not to blocks, dashes, and lines. Finally, the bias was se nsitive to typographical errors but not to colour cuing. These findings sug gest that special cognitive operations determine the perceived spatial exte nt of words. Implications for our understanding of perceptual and cognitive processes in reading are discussed.