A Word Superiority Effect in a Phonetically Precise Orthography

Other things being equal, a letter is identified more accurately and rapidly in the context of a word than in the context of a nonword. This word-superiori ty effect has been demonstrated many times wi th materials conforming to English orthography. The present experiment, using the probe letter-recogni tion procedure, demonstrates the same effect for the Serbo-Croatian orthography. In that the English and Serbo-Croatian orthographies distinguish markedly in the level at which they systematically reference the spoken language, it appears that the word-superiority effect is not owing to orthographic idiosyncracies. Analysis of the effect in Serbo-Croatian suggests that it is not completely accountable for in terms of inter letter probability structure and that word-specific factors may be involved. Under the same conditions, a letter is identified more rapidly and more accurately in the context of a word than in the context of a nonword. This letter-in-context or word-superiori ty effect is now a well-established fact for fluent readers of the English orthography (Baron, 1978). Arguably, fluent readers of English relate more efficiently to English words than to letter strings wi th which they have had no experience because they have learned something about the structure of written English in general and/or the properties of English words in particular. What has been learned to enhance word perception cannot be precisely pinpointed. Nevertheless, several kinds of knowledge can be proposed as potential candidates, for example, meaning, whole-word familiarity, word-specific associations with sounds, spelling rules and familiarity with spelling patterns (Baron, 1978). Questions as to the aspect or aspects of word processing that these kinds of knowledge influence are largely unresolved, although most recent evidence appears to rule out the feature analysis of component letters (Krueger & Shapiro, 1979; Massaro, 1979; Staller & Lappin, 1979). The major focus of the present paper is a simple question: Does the word superiority effect hold for an orthography that differs nontrivially from the orthography of English? Orthographies work as transcriptions of language because the patterning of symbols in written text bears a systematic relationship to some corresponding patterning in the spoken language. The orthography of English is principally (but not exclusively) systematic with reference to +University of Belgrade ++Also University of Connecticut. This research was supported in part by NICHD Grant HD-08495 to the University of Belgrade and in part by NICHD Grant HD-01994 to Haskins Laboratories LABORATORIES: Status on Research (1980) ] 263 the morphophonemics of the spoken language, while the orthography of SerboCroatian is principally (but not exclusively) systematic with reference to the (classically defined) phonemics of the spoken language (see Lukatela & Turvey, 1980; Lukatela, Popadic, Ognjenovic, & Turvey, 1980)0 We might expect to find, therefore, differences between the reading-related processes exhibited by fluent readers of English and those exhibited by fluent readers of SerboCroatian 0 For fluent readers of Serbo-Croatian, lexical decision is mediated by phonetic recoding (Lukatela et alo, 1980); in contrast, fluent readers of English tend to access the lexicon in nonphonological terms (Coltheart, Besner, Jonasson, & Davelaar, 1979)0 With respect to a distinction drawn by Baron and Strawson (1976), fluent readers of Serbo-Croatian may be disproportionatel y "Phoenician" (that is, treat the written word as an alphabetic transcription), while fl uent of ish may be y n Chinese" (that is, treat the wri tten word as a logographic transcription) e Though the latter contrast is exaggerated, it makes the point that the phonemically oriented Serbo-Croatian orthography and the morphophonemically oriented Engl ish orthography may give emphasis to different aspects of the written form of the word and thus motivate the acquisition of, and a dependency on, different kinds of knowledge for word perception 0 the letter-in-context or word-superiority effect is indigenous to the ish orthography (and to orthographies of like kind) and is due to the fact that the processing of written English often demands the use of recoding units larger than the single letter. We doubt that there is such a restriction on the word-superiori ty effect, but the question of the effect's dependency on the orthography must be asked neverthelesso The question was addressed through the first introduced Reicher (1 ). A horizontally of letters is briefly exposed and followed immediately a mask ( the region of the letter ) with two letters located above and below the of a letter in the The ect t s task is y to choose which of the two letters occ the posi tion 0 Of interest is how letter recognition varies with the nature of the letter string0