Abstract
In the present study, we examined letter detection in very frequent function-word sequences. It has been claimed that such sequences are processed in a unitized manner, thus preempting access to their constituent letters. In contrast, we showed that letter detection in the wordsfor andthe (1) was no more difficult when the words appeared in adjacent locations in a sentence (familiar) than when they appeared apart (less familiar sequence) and (2) was contingent upon the words' syntactic roles within the phrase. Thus, letter detection infor was easier when the sequence was separated by a clause boundary than when the words were part of the same clause. The advantage derived from clause separation was strongest when a comma divided clauses. These results challenge the unitization account of the “missing-letter” effect in common phrases and support a position where this phenomenon is seen to reflect the extraction of phrase structure during reading.
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This research was supported by Grant 88-00395 to Koriat and Greenberg from the United States-Israel Binational Science Foundation (BSF), Jerusalem, Israel. The experiments were also supported by grants from the PEW Foundation and Union College.
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Greenberg, S.N., Koriat, A. & Shapiro, A. The effects of syntactic structure on letter detection in adjacent function words. Mem Cogn 20, 663–670 (1992). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03202716
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03202716