Lexical processing in the absence of explicit word identification: Evidence from a letter-by-letter reader

Abstract The lexical decision performance of a letter-by-letter reader, ML, was analysed for words presented for too short an exposure duration for him to identify or name them. His level of performance was surprisingly good by comparison with that of previously reported patients. In addition he gave a very similar pattern of responses to inappropriately affixed words as to appropriately affixed ones. His performance on these tasks could not be attributed to neglect or to the use of letter sequential dependencies. In addition, with the same exposure duration, ML showed “semantic access” characteristics in word categorisation tasks. This evidence for lexical processing in the absence of explicit identification is discussed in relation to alternative accounts of letter-by-letter reading.

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