Word superiority effect

In cognitive psychology, the word superiority effect (WSE)refers to a particular mental phenomenon, in which people recognize letters in the context of a word better than when the letter is presented in isolation. This effect was first described by J.M. Cattell (1886) , and important contributions came from Reicher (1969) . It was further studied by Johnston and McClelland (1973). Large amounts of research have been done to try to emulate our own ability using computers [http://www.cnbc.cmu.edu/PDP++/PDP++.html to simulate the neural networks in the brain] .

The word superiority effect has proven to be an important finding for [http://www.microsoft.com/typography/ctfonts/WordRecognition.aspx word recognition models] , and most specifically supports the Rumelhart and McClelland Activation model (Figure 1). According to this model, when presented with a word, each letter in parallel will stimulate or inhibit different feature detectors "(eg. curved feature for "C", horizontal and vertical bars for "H", etc.)". Thosefeature detectors would then stimulate or inhibit different letter detectors, which would then stimulate or inhibit different word detectors. Each activated connection would carry a different weight, and thus the word "WORK" inthe example would be activated more than any other word.

This provides evidence for why the participants are more able to report the correct letter when presented within the context of a word, as opposed to a letter presented in isolation.

When the letter is presented in a word, the feature detectors, letter detectors and word detectors will be activated. However, when only the letter is presented, only the letter-detector level will be activated. Therefore, we will remember more clearly what the word presented was, and thereby its component letters

The Adverse Word Superiority Effect

One of the findings of the Johnston and McClelland report was that the word superiority effect does not occur inevitably whenever we compare a word and a non-word. Rather it depends somewhat upon the"strategies" the subjects bring to the task they are performing. What Johnston and McClelland found was that if the subjects paid more attention to the letter in a particular position, they wouldexperience the adverse word superiority effect. This is because the participant would no longer have the benefit of having the word detector level activated with as much weight if they had insteadfocused on the whole word.

References

*Sternberg, Robert J. (2006). "Cognitive Psychology"; fourth edition.
*Crowder, Robert G. and Wagner, Richard K. (1992). "The Psychology of Reading", second edition. p.79.
*Harris, Margaret and Coltheart, Max. (1986) "Language Processing in Children and Adults". p.155.
*Francis, Greg, Neath, Ian, Mackewn, Angie, and Goldthwaite, Danalee. (2004). Belmont: Wadsworth, p.73-74.
*Grainger, Jonathan, Sébastien Bouttevin, Cathy Truc, Mireille Bastien, and Johannes Ziegler. "Word superiority, pseudoword superiority, and learning to read: A comparison of dyslexic and normal readers." "Brain and Language" 66 (2003): 1105-1114. EBSCO. 27 January 2006.

External links

* [http://www.microsoft.com/typography/ctfonts/WordRecognition.aspx "The Science of Word Recognition"] by Kevin Larson, 2004