Sacchi Elizabeth, Mirchin Ryan, Laszlo Sarah
Department of Psychology, Binghamton University, USA.
Department of Psychology, Binghamton University, USA; Program in Linguistics, Binghamton University, USA.
Brain Res. 2018 Apr 1;1684:9-20. doi: 10.1016/j.brainres.2018.01.028. Epub 2018 Feb 1.
Increasing spacing between letters in words (e.g., s p a c e vs. space) helps children and adults read more fluidly and with fewer errors. This effect has been demonstrated behaviorally, chiefly through lexical decision reaction time and total paragraph reading time. To date, however, no electrophysiological work has examined the letter spacing effect, resulting in little insight regarding how letter spacing impacts "hidden" levels of processing between apprehension of the word form and the final behavioral outcome. Here, we examined how varying levels of interletter spacing (crowded, standard, and increased) impact ERPs elicited by words and other item types (pseudowords, illegal strings, and a false font). Results indicate that letter spacing does not impact the ERP within the first second after viewing a wordform, but that it does have downstream effects as indicated by data collected using a priming design. Further, the facilitation of downstream processing afforded by increased spacing seems to be greater for more word-like stimuli (e.g., greater for words than for consonant strings, etc). Results are discussed as being somewhat inconsistent with prevalent views of the mechanism of the letter spacing effect (i.e., crowding).
增加单词中字母之间的间距（例如，s p a c e与space对比）有助于儿童和成人更流畅地阅读，且错误更少。这种效应已通过行为学得到证明，主要是通过词汇判断反应时间和段落总阅读时间。然而，迄今为止，尚无电生理学研究考察字母间距效应，因此对于字母间距如何影响单词形式理解与最终行为结果之间“隐藏”的加工水平，人们了解甚少。在此，我们研究了不同程度的字母间距（紧密、标准和加大）如何影响由单词及其他项目类型（假词、非法字符串和错误字体）引发的事件相关电位（ERP）。结果表明，字母间距在看到单词形式后的第一秒内不会影响ERP，但如采用启动设计收集的数据所示，它确实会产生下游效应。此外，加大间距对下游加工的促进作用似乎对更像单词的刺激更大（例如，对单词的促进作用大于对辅音串等的促进作用）。研究结果被认为在一定程度上与字母间距效应机制（即拥挤）的普遍观点不一致。
