EFFECTS OF POSITION OF TRANSPOSITION AND TRANSPOSITION DISTANCE IN VISUAL WORD RECOGNITION

Abstract

The transposed-letter effect is a robust finding in the visual word recognition literature, and refers to the phenomenon in which participants respond faster to a target (e.g. PASTRY) when it is preceded by the presentation of a transposed-letter nonword prime (e.g. patsry). The magnitude of this effect has been found to be affected two variables: position of transposition (apstry vs patsry vs. pastyr) and transposition distance (apstry vs. saptry). While much research has been conducted on the two variables independently, no study has yet to explore the possibility of an interaction between the two variables. The present study systematically examined the influences of the two variables on the transposed-letter effect using a standard masked priming paradigm with prime durations of 35ms (Experiment 1) and 50ms (Experiment 2) to examine if the two variables interact. Both experiments yielded similar results, where less priming is observed for non-adjacent than adjacent letter transpositions. Interestingly, final-position transpositions generated more priming than initial-position transpositions, contrary to the extant literature. The effects of position of transposition and transposition were also found to operate independently. The empirical evidence obtained was also compared against the predictions of current theoretical models, and the theoretical implications of the findings are discussed.