Do first and last letters carry more weight in the mechanism behind word familiarity?

ABSTRACT: Previous research has suggested a role of letter location information in familiarity-detection that occurs with word stimuli, but no studies have yet investigated whether certain letter positions are weighted more heavily in the feature-based mechanism behind word familiarity-detection. Based on psycholinguistic research suggesting that first and last letters are weighted more heavily than interior letters when it comes to reading words, we investigated whether first and last letters carry more weight in the mechanism behind word familiarity that results from feature familiarization in a list-learning paradigm. In two experiments, participants studied word fragments (e.g., RA_ _ _ _OP) and later rated the familiarity of complete words (e.g., RAINDROP). We varied whether the first and last

SUBMITTER: Huebert AM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8982651 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature