• Exploring the role of visual s...

*Result*: Exploring the role of visual similarity in parafoveal processing: Insights from the Flanking Letter Lexical Decision task.

Title:
Exploring the role of visual similarity in parafoveal processing: Insights from the Flanking Letter Lexical Decision task.
Authors:
Brossette B; Aix-Marseille Univ, CNRS, Laboratoire Parole et Langage (LPL), Aix-en-Provence, France.; Aix-Marseille Univ, Pôle Pilote AMPIRIC, Marseille, France.; Université Lumière Lyon 2, Laboratoire d'Études des Mécanismes Cognitifs, Lyon, France., Lété B; Université Lumière Lyon 2, Laboratoire d'Études des Mécanismes Cognitifs, Lyon, France.
Source:
Quarterly journal of experimental psychology (2006) [Q J Exp Psychol (Hove)] 2025 Oct; Vol. 78 (10), pp. 2133-2141. Date of Electronic Publication: 2025 Jan 28.
Publication Type:
Journal Article
Language:
English
Journal Info:
Publisher: Sage in association with Experimental Psychology Society Country of Publication: England NLM ID: 101259775 Publication Model: Print-Electronic Cited Medium: Internet ISSN: 1747-0226 (Electronic) Linking ISSN: 17470218 NLM ISO Abbreviation: Q J Exp Psychol (Hove) Subsets: MEDLINE
Imprint Name(s):
Publication: 2018- : London : Sage in association with Experimental Psychology Society
Original Publication: London : Informa Healthcare
MeSH Terms:
Decision Making*/physiology , Pattern Recognition, Visual*/physiology , Reading* , Fovea Centralis*/physiology , Attention*/physiology , Visual Fields*/physiology, Humans ; Male ; Female ; Reaction Time/physiology ; Young Adult ; Adult ; Photic Stimulation ; Bayes Theorem ; Vocabulary ; Semantics ; Analysis of Variance
Contributed Indexing:
Keywords: Flanking Letter Lexical Decision; Parafoveal processing; mirror letter; orthographic processing; visual similarity
Entry Date(s):
Date Created: 20241207 Date Completed: 20251001 Latest Revision: 20251001
Update Code:
20260130
DOI:
10.1177/17470218241308376
PMID:
39644083
Database:
MEDLINE

*Further Information*

*This study explores the impact of visually similar flanking stimuli on central target words using the Flanking Letter Lexical Decision (FLLD) task. Specifically, we investigated whether visual similarity effects can explain orthographic relatedness effects observed in previous FLLD tasks. By employing non-reversal mirror letters as visual flankers, we compared their influence on response times to traditional orthographic-related and orthographic-unrelated conditions. Results confirmed the known facilitative effect of orthographic-related flankers on response times (ROCK ROCK ROCK). However, mirror-related conditions showed no facilitative effect ([Formula: see text] ROCK [Formula: see text]), as evidenced by a Bayesian analysis indicating no significant differences between mirror-related and mirror-unrelated ([Formula: see text] ROCK [Formula: see text]). These findings suggest that low-level visual information in the parafovea does not contribute to the processing of the foveal word in tasks requiring specific word identification. The study concludes that only parafoveal information with relevant linguistic content is spatially pooled across target and flankers during word identification tasks. This research highlights the need to consider task-specific attentional demands and the linguistic relevance of parafoveal information in understanding visual and orthographic processing in reading.*

*Declaration of conflicting interestsThe author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.*