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. 1994 Sep;1(3):333-44.
doi: 10.3758/BF03213975.

Letter detection: A window to unitization and other cognitive processes in reading text

A F Healy  1
Affiliations

Letter detection: A window to unitization and other cognitive processes in reading text

A F Healy. Psychon Bull Rev. 1994 Sep.

Abstract

Experiments are reviewed that use the letter-detection task, in which subjects read text and circle target letters. Evidence is provided that the letter-detection task reveals the processing units used in reading text and is influenced as well by visual, phonetic, and a combination of semantic and syntactic factors. Specifically, it is shown that circling a target letter in a word depends on the familiarity of the word's visual configuration, the location of the word in the reader's visual field, the phonetic representation of the letter in the word, and a combination of the word's meaning and its grammatical function.

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