Length effects in word perception: We is better than I but worse than you or them

D. D. Wheeler's (1970) finding that the words I and A do not have the same advantage as other words, despite their lexical status, was replicated in 3 experiments (54 high school Ss). This result held even under conditions designed to influence Ss to process I and A as words. The poor performan...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of experimental psychology. Human perception and performance 1982-02, Vol.8 (1), p.91-105
Main Authors: Samuel, Arthur G, Van Santen, Jan P, Johnston, James C
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adolescent
Cognitive Processes
Form Perception
Human
Humans
Letters (Alphabet)
Reading
Recognition (Learning)
Retention (Psychology)
Semantics
Verbal Stimuli
Visual Perception
Words (Phonetic Units)
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Summary:D. D. Wheeler's (1970) finding that the words I and A do not have the same advantage as other words, despite their lexical status, was replicated in 3 experiments (54 high school Ss). This result held even under conditions designed to influence Ss to process I and A as words. The poor performance on these single-letter words was shown to be a manifestation of a more general length effect: Recognition of briefly presented words improves with increasing length (up to 3 or 4 letters). The perceptual advantage for longer words was not found for closely matched strings of unrelated letters. The strength and robustness of the word-length effect suggest that theories of the word advantage must include mechanisms that are length dependent. (20 ref)
ISSN:0096-1523
1939-1277
DOI:10.1037/0096-1523.8.1.91