A word-superiority effect with print and braille characters

Braille (tactual) text is read only about one-third as rapidly as print (visual) text, but the same basic cognitive processes may be involved in both cases, because familiarity aids letter search in a similar fashion for the two modalities. Experiment 1 found that with grade 1 braille, as with print, letter search is about 10% faster through common words than through nonwords. Thus, braille, like print, is processed in neither an entirely holistic manner, with the word gestalt concealing its letter components, nor in an entirely analytical manner, with each letter dealt with separately and independently. Experiment 2 (print displays) and Experiment 3 (braille displays) both found a word advantage in letter search through words and nonwords containing no spelling patterns that form contractions in grade 2 braille. Experiment 2 also confirmed previous work showing that the time savings for words does not vary when the memory set size (number of predesignated target letters) is varied. This indicates that the word advantage is at encoding rather than comparison.

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