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Holistic word processing is correlated with efficiency in visual word recognition

2020; Springer Science+Business Media; Volume: 82; Issue: 5 Linguagem: Inglês

10.3758/s13414-020-01988-2

1943-393X

Paulo Ventura, Tânia Fernandes, Alexandre Pereira, José C. Guerreiro, António Farinha‐Fernandes, João Delgado, Miguel F. Ferreira, Bruno Faustino, Isabel María Raposo, Alan C.‐N. Wong,

Visual and Cognitive Learning Processes

Holistic processing of visual words (i.e., obligatory encoding of/attending to all letters of a word) could be a marker of expert word recognition. In the present study, we thus examined for the first time whether there is a direct relation between the word-composite effect (i.e., all parts of a visual word are fully processed when observers perform a task on a word part) and fast access to the orthographic lexicon by visual word experts (i.e., fluent adult readers). We adopted an individual differences approach and used the word-frequency effect (i.e., faster recognition of high- than low-frequency words) in an independent lexical decision task as a proxy of fast access to lexical orthographic representations. Fluent readers with larger word-composite effect showed smaller word-frequency effect. This correlation was mainly driven by an association between a larger composite effect and faster lexical decision on low-frequency words, probably because these lexical representations are less stable and integrated/unitized, hence allowing differentiating among fluent readers. We thus showed that holistic processing of visual words is indeed related to higher efficiency in visual word recognition by skilled readers.