Letter-Detection Errors in the Word The: Word Frequency Versus Syntactic Structure

In a letter-detection task, participants make more errors detecting the letter t in the word the than in other words. According to the unitization hypothesis, errors occur because the word the is processed as a whole unit and lower order processes (such as letter recognition) are not completed (Healy, 1994). According to the structural model of reading, errors occur because the syntactic function of the word the pulls attention away from this word (Koriat & Greenberg, 1991). Three experiments were conducted to compare these theories. In Experiment 1, the frequency of the was manipulated, and letter-detection error rates were compared between low-frequency and high-frequency usage. In Experiment 2, error rates between high- and low-frequency content words were compared. In Experiment 3, letter detection in normally structured sentences and garden-path sentences were compared. Results consistently support the unitization hypothesis.

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