The Limited Impact of Exposure Duration on Holistic Word Processing

Abstract

The current study explored the impact of stimuli exposure duration on holistic word processing measured by the complete composite paradigm (CPc paradigm). The participants were asked to match the cued target parts of two characters which were presented for either a long (600 ms) or a short duration (170 ms). They were also tested by two popular versions of the CPc paradigm: the "early-fixed" task where the attention cue was visible from the beginning of each trial at a fixed position, and the "delayed-random" task where the cue showed up after the study character at random locations. The holistic word effect, as indexed by the alignment × congruency interaction, was identified in both tasks and was unaffected by the stimuli duration in both tasks. Meanwhile, the "delayed-random" task did not bring about larger holistic word effect than the "early-fixed" task. These results suggest the exposure duration (from around 150 to 600 ms) has a limited impact on the holistic word effect, and have methodological implications for experiment designs in this field.

Keywords: Chinese character; composite task; holistic processing; signal detection theory; word recognition.

Figure 1

Trial types and sample Chinese characters in the complete composite task. The alignment (aligned, misaligned) × congruency (congruent, incongruent) × response (same, different) combination results into 8 trial types. Participants were asked to match the target parts (cued by the white bracket) of two sequential characters in each trial.

Figure 2

Trial sequence in the “early-fixed cueing” task.

Figure 3

Discrimination sensitivity in the “early-fixed cueing” task when the duration of character presentation was 170 ms (left panel) and 600 ms (right panel). Error bars represent 1 SEM.

Figure 4

Reaction time in the “early-fixed cueing” task when character presentation was 170 ms (left panel) and 600 ms (right panel). Error bars represent 1 SEM.

Figure 5

Discrimination sensitivity in the “delayed-random cueing” task when character presentation was 170 ms (left panel) and 600 ms (right panel). Error bars represent 1 SEM.

Figure 6

Reaction time in the “delayed-random cueing” task when character presentation was 170 ms (left panel) and 600 ms (right panel). Error bars represent 1 SEM.