Chunking in Language Usage, Learning and Change: I Don't Know

I suspect that you perceived more letters from later strings than from earlier ones. But given that each stimulus was the same eight letters long, why should that be? Miller et al. (1954) showed Harvard undergraduates pseudoword letter strings like those above for very brief presentations (a tenth of a second) using a tachistoscope. The average number of letters correctly reported for the four types of stimuli were, in order, 53, 69, 77 and 87 percent. The pseudowords differed in their ‘order of approximation to English’ (AtoE). CVGJCDHM exemplifies zero-order AtoE strings – they are made up of letters of English, but these are sampled with equal probability of occurrence (1 in 26). RPITCQET exemplifies first-order AtoE strings – made up of letters of English, but sampled according to their frequency of occurrence in the written language (as in opening a book at random, sticking a pin in the page, and choosing the pinned letter [e.g. ‘r’]; repeat). UMATSORE exemplifies second-order AtoE – these reflect the