Individual differences and the transposed letter effect during reading
Individual differences and the transposed letter effect during reading
When a preview contains substituted letters (SL; markey) word identification is more disrupted for a target word (monkey), compared to when the preview contains transposed letters (TL; mnokey). The transposed letter effect demonstrates that letter positions are encoded more flexibly than letter identities, and is a robust finding in adults. However, letter position encoding has been shown to gradually become more flexible as reading skills develop. It is unclear whether letter position encoding flexibility reaches maturation in skilled adult readers, or whether some differences in the magnitude of the TL effect remain in relation to individual differences in cognitive skills. We examined 100 skilled adult readers who read sentences containing a correct, TL or SL preview. Previews were replaced by the correct target word when the reader’s gaze triggered an invisible boundary. Cognitive skills were assessed and grouped based on overlapping variance via Principal Components Analysis (PCA) and subsequently used to predict eye movement measures for each condition. Consistent with previous literature, adult readers were found to generally encode letter position more flexibly than letter identity. Very few differences were found in the magnitude of TL effects between adults based on individual differences in cognitive skills. The flexibility of letter position encoding appears to reach maturation (or near maturation) in skilled adult readers.
Lee, Charlotte E.
b2006537-d679-4d48-a79b-ea44d75b30e6
Pagán, Ascensión
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Godwin, Hayward J.
033d2282-3553-4ba9-b66e-7ebde8fedb5a
Drieghe, Denis
dfe41922-1cea-47f4-904b-26d5c9fe85ce
28 February 2024
Lee, Charlotte E.
b2006537-d679-4d48-a79b-ea44d75b30e6
Pagán, Ascensión
7eca4c77-82d2-4516-80cf-5e9953074ce6
Godwin, Hayward J.
033d2282-3553-4ba9-b66e-7ebde8fedb5a
Drieghe, Denis
dfe41922-1cea-47f4-904b-26d5c9fe85ce
Lee, Charlotte E., Pagán, Ascensión, Godwin, Hayward J. and Drieghe, Denis
(2024)
Individual differences and the transposed letter effect during reading.
PLoS ONE, 19 (2 February), [e0298351].
(doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0298351).
Abstract
When a preview contains substituted letters (SL; markey) word identification is more disrupted for a target word (monkey), compared to when the preview contains transposed letters (TL; mnokey). The transposed letter effect demonstrates that letter positions are encoded more flexibly than letter identities, and is a robust finding in adults. However, letter position encoding has been shown to gradually become more flexible as reading skills develop. It is unclear whether letter position encoding flexibility reaches maturation in skilled adult readers, or whether some differences in the magnitude of the TL effect remain in relation to individual differences in cognitive skills. We examined 100 skilled adult readers who read sentences containing a correct, TL or SL preview. Previews were replaced by the correct target word when the reader’s gaze triggered an invisible boundary. Cognitive skills were assessed and grouped based on overlapping variance via Principal Components Analysis (PCA) and subsequently used to predict eye movement measures for each condition. Consistent with previous literature, adult readers were found to generally encode letter position more flexibly than letter identity. Very few differences were found in the magnitude of TL effects between adults based on individual differences in cognitive skills. The flexibility of letter position encoding appears to reach maturation (or near maturation) in skilled adult readers.
Text
Lee, Pagan, Godwin & Drieghe (2024)
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Accepted/In Press date: 22 January 2024
Published date: 28 February 2024
Additional Information:
Funding information:
CL was funded by the UKRI Economic and Social Research Council South Coast Doctoral.
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© 2024 Lee et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
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Local EPrints ID: 487628
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/487628
ISSN: 1932-6203
PURE UUID: c4e7d153-87f7-4894-8c38-bb92ed57bd8e
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Date deposited: 29 Feb 2024 17:41
Last modified: 25 Apr 2024 01:54
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Author:
Charlotte E. Lee
Author:
Ascensión Pagán
Author:
Hayward J. Godwin
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