How do Scrabble players encode letter position during reading?

BACKGROUND A number of experiments with skilled adult readers have shown that a transposed-letter pseudoword (e.g., CHOLOCATE) is considerably more word-like than a control replacement-letter pseudoword (e.g., CHOTONATE). For instance, in lexical decision, response times are longer and less accurate for CHOLOCATE than for CHOTONATE (i.e., a transposed-letter effect). METHOD Here, we examined how letter position coding is attained in individuals who excel in orthographic-lexical processing: competitive Scrabble players. To this end, we conducted a lexical decision experiment with two types of pseudowords (transposed-letter vs. replacement-letter pseudowords). RESULTS Data showed that while the transposed-letter effect does occur in expert Scrabble players, the magnitude of the effect is dramatically smaller than in a control group of university students—in particular, for the accuracy data. CONCLUSIONS The parameters responsible for the flexibility of letter position coding in models of visual word recognition must be modulated by the degree of expertise in orthographic-lexical processing.