Visual Word Recognition in Skilled Adult Readers

Abstract

Visual word recognition is the foundation of reading. It is the place where form meets meaning and hence is the basis by which higher order semantic and comprehension processes take place. Although evidence suggests that reading is an interactive process, one must be able to recognize a word before (s)he can reliably integrate its meaning into a coherent message. The importance of this process is exemplified by the amount of research that has been conducted on word processing in cognitive psychology and related fields. Word recognition research has been central to developments in cognitive neuroscience (e.g., Frost et al., 2005; Pugh, Sandak, Frost, Moore & Mencl, 2005), serial vs. parallel processing (e.g., Coltheart & Rastle, 1994; Cortese, 1998; Weekes, 1997), attention (e.g., Neely, 1977; Zevin & Balota, 2000), educational practices (e.g., Harm, McCandliss, & Seidenberg, 2003), connectionism (e.g., Coltheart, Rastle, Perry, Langdon, & Haller, 2001; Plaut, McClelland, Seidenberg, & Patterson, 1996) and much more. In this light, the word can be viewed as important to developments in cognitive psychology as the cell has been to developments in the biological sciences (see Balota, 1994). In this chapter, we begin by providing an overview of the standard tools that are employed in visual word recognition research. Next, we discuss some general theoretical issues

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