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Article Dans Une Revue Psychonomic Bulletin and Review Année : 2016

The letter height superiority illusion

Résumé

Letters are identified better when they are embedded within words rather than within pseudowords, a phenomenon known as the word superiority effect (Reicher in Journal of Experimental Psychology, 81,275 –280, 1969 ). This effect is, inter alia, accounted for by the interactive activation model (McClelland & Rumelhart in Psychological Review, 88,375–407, 1981 ) through feedback from word to letter nodes. In this study, we investigated whether overactivation of featurescould lead to perceptual bias, wherein letters would be perceived as being taller than pseudoletters, or words would be perceived as being taller than pseudowords. In two experiments, we investigated the effects of letter and lexical status on the perception of size. Participants who had to compare the heights of letters and pseudoletters, or of words and pseudowords, indeed perceived the former stimuli as being taller than the latter. Possible alternative interpretations of this height superiority effect for letters and words are discussed.

Dates et versions

hal-01435671 , version 1 (15-01-2017)

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Boris New, Karine Doré-Mazars, Céline Cavézian, Christophe Pallier, Julien Barra. The letter height superiority illusion. Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, 2016, 23 (1), pp.291 - 298. ⟨10.3758/s13423-014-0753-8⟩. ⟨hal-01435671⟩
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