Word-to-letter inhibition: Word-inferiority and other interference effects

Abstract

Four experiments were run to determine whether the interactive activation model would more accurately reflect the effect of context in letter perception by including word-to-letter inhibition resulting from word-to-word inhibition produced when multiple word units become active. The first three experiments found less accurate target letter discrimination in word than in nonword strings when a string was altered halfway through the exposure through adding or dropping a nontarget letter. The alteration changed a word to a different word or a nonword to a different nonword. Unaltered strings produced the typical word-superiority effect. The last experiment found an inverse relationship between target discrimination performance and the number of word substrings contained in each of a set of word quadrigrams that were individually exposed. © 1986 Psychonomic Society, Inc.