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The initial capitalization superiority effect in German: evidence for a perceptual frequency variant of the orthographic cue hypothesis of visual word recognition

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Abstract

A perceptual frequency variant of the orthographic cue (OC) hypothesis (Peressotti, Cubelli, & Job, 2003) was tested in two perceptual identification experiments using the variable viewing position technique: German nouns and non-nouns that are most frequently perceived with or without initial letter capitalization, respectively, were tachistoscopically presented in upper-case, lower-case, or with initial capitalization. The results indicated that words were best recognized in the form they are most frequently perceived in, which suggests that during reading acquisition abstract as well as case- and item-specific OCs may be learned and used for recognition.

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Notes

  1. The equation is mathematically identical to Nazir et al. (1998), but formulated differently—the asymmetry parameter A, which will be computed and interpreted in the fittings below is directly used in the current version of the formula, while in Nazir et al. (1998) it is indirectly computed from the drop-off rates to the right and to the left A = b_left/b_right. Thus, while by that linear transformation the mathematical content and fitting behavior of the formula is not affected, the interpretation of A can be directly verified in the formula as it stands now.

  2. The missing-letter effect refers to the phenomenon that letters are more difficult to detect in common function words than in content words. This effect is typically attributed to whole-word processing of highly familiar words that allows bypassing analyses at the letter level.

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Acknowledgments

This research was supported by grants from the German Research Foundation (DFG: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft) to Arthur M. Jacobs supporting Ralf Graf and Hans-Christoph Nuerk (Teilprojekte 7 und 8 der Forschergruppe: Dynamik kognitiver Repräsentationen). Tatjana A. Nazir is member of the Marie Curie research and Training Network: Language and Brain (RTN:LAB) funded by the European Commission (MRTN-CT–2004-512141) as part of its “Sixth Framework Program). We thank Katja Oßwald, Daniela Brustmann, and Kai Richter for their precious help in the realization of this study.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Arbeitsbereich Allgemeine und Neurokognitive Psychologie, Fachbereich Erziehungswissenschaft und Psychologie, Freie Universität Berlin, Habelschwerdter Allee 45, 14195, Berlin, Germany

    Arthur M. Jacobs & Mario Braun

  2. Universität Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany

    Hans-Christoph Nuerk

  3. Katholische Universität Eichstätt-Ingolstadt, Eichstätt, Germany

    Ralf Graf

  4. Institut des Sciences Cognitives, CNRS, Lyon, France

    Tatjana A. Nazir

Authors
  1. Arthur M. Jacobs
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  2. Hans-Christoph Nuerk
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  3. Ralf Graf
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  4. Mario Braun
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  5. Tatjana A. Nazir
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Arthur M. Jacobs.

Appendix

Appendix

All stimuli were five-letter German nouns and were displayed in a fixed font (Table 3).

Table 3 Noun stimuli of Experiment 1 and non-noun stimuli of Experiment 2: Note that due to the Latin Square Design and the within-participant presentation of different word forms, i.e., repetitions, individual item statistics are not meaningful and are hence not reported in Experiments 1 and 2 (see text for details)
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Jacobs, A.M., Nuerk, HC., Graf, R. et al. The initial capitalization superiority effect in German: evidence for a perceptual frequency variant of the orthographic cue hypothesis of visual word recognition. Psychological Research 72, 657–665 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-008-0168-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-008-0168-0

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