Yu-Chi Tai, Shun-nan Yang, John Hayes , James Sheedy Innovative Approaches to Displaying Words Yu-Chi Tai, Shun-nan Yang, John Hayes , James Sheedy College of Optometry Pacific University, Forest Grove, Oregon Results. For within-word letter identification, response latency and accuracy were similarly facilitated by syllable-based segmentation and better than no segmentation. Task. Subjects were asked to judge whether the presented word can be used as a noun. Results. Response accuracy in lexicon decision was best for syllable-based segmentation than the others. ABSTRACT EXPERIMENT 1. Threshold word recognition An ongoing debate concerns whether words with complex structures are processed by direct encoding of the whole word, by segmenting individual morphemes, or by associating syllables with sounds. We investigated whether visually segmenting a word into units based on these hypothesized processes would differentially affect the accuracy and latency of lexical access. If one of these processes is more critically utilized in lexical access than others, the corresponding segmentation method should result in greater benefit in lexical access. Task. Subjects reported words presented at designated angluar sizes by increasing viewing distance. Correct responses were transformed into logMAR (log value of the Minimum Angular Resolution) value to represent the smallest visual angle for recognizing a word. Results. Threshold word recognition was best with syllable-based segmentation and was poorest with no segmentation. CONCLUSIONS These results show that syllable-based segmentation improves word recognition, within-word letter identification, and syntactic judgment more than morpheme-based segmentation and no segmentation. For skilled native English readers, segmenting a word into syllables enhances word processing at various levels. While these findings do not exclude the use of other routes for word processing, they demonstrate the strong facilitating effect of syllabic segmentation on phonological processing. The results suggest an innovative approach to display text that can potentially facilitate a reader’s word processing by placing extra space between syllables. Figure 1. Effect of segmentation on threshold word recognition. Log MAR refers to “the logarithm of the minimum angle of resolution.” A smaller threshold logMAR value indicates thw word can be resolved at a smaller angular size. The outside white box represents the 95% interval of the estimated mean in each testing condition and the inner gray box represents the 84% interval of the mean. The lack of overlap for any two gray boxes indicates a statistically significant difference of α < .05 for the corresponding conditions. METHODS Subjects. Fifty-four native English speakers (age 18-40) were recruited. Materials. Words of 7- to 13-letters with similar frequency were presented with 12-point Consolas in 3 conditions: syllable-segmented, morpheme-segmented, or no-segmentation conditions. Segmentation was achieved by inserting 2 extra pixels of space between segments. EXPERIMENT 3. Lexical decision ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS EXPERIMENT 2. Within-word letter recognition This study was supported by a grant from The Advanced Reading Group of Microsoft Corporation to James E. Sheedy. Task. Subjects were asked to identify which of two letters was presented briefly on the tested location before. CONTACT INFORMATION Principal Investigator Yu-Chi Tai T: 503.352.2289 E: ytai@pacificu.edu