Word values, word frequency, and visual duration thresholds.

A number of studies have shown a relation to exist between word frequency, word value, and visual duration thresholds. Certain issues have developed concerning the interpretation of the observed relations. Two types of interpretation of results can be distinguished : 1. Those interpretations that claim word frequency to be the major determinant of visual duration threshold. This point of view contends that the responses made to the tachistoscopic presentation of words are learned in the same manner that other responses are learned. Differences in the visual duration thresholds of words can then be accounted for in terms of word frequency so that the introduction of such tenuous and "unanchored" variables as perceptual selectivity and perceptual defense is a violation of the law of parsimony. Thus, the problems that exist with regard to the differential visual duration thresholds of words are problems in learning, not problems in perception. 2. Those interpretations that attempt to show that differences in the visual duration thresholds of words are due, all or in part, to differences in the affective qualities (values, goodness-badness, affective tone, emotional valence) attached to words. These affective qualities affect visual duration thresholds directly, through perceptual selectivity and/or perceptual defense. Visual duration thresholds of words are determined by variables that can be called perceptual variables instead of or along with those variables that usually bear upon learning. We wish to center our introductory discussion around those few studies which, for us, best exemplify the two positions described above. Solomon and Howes (1951) take the position that differences between words can be accounted for on the basis of word frequency. The perceptual process does not differ in any fundamental way from the learning process. They say: