School of Psychology, University of Southampton, Southampton, United Kingdom.
School of Psychology and Vision Sciences, University of Leicester, Leicester, United Kingdom.
PLoS One. 2024 Feb 28;19(2):e0298351. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0298351. eCollection 2024.
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.
当预览包含替代字母（SL；markey）时，与预览包含换位字母（TL；mnokey）相比，目标词（monkey）的单词识别受到更大的干扰。换位字母效应表明，字母位置的编码比字母身份更灵活，这是成人中的一个可靠发现。然而，随着阅读技能的发展，字母位置的编码已经被证明变得越来越灵活。目前尚不清楚字母位置编码的灵活性是否在熟练的成年读者中达到成熟，或者在与认知技能个体差异相关的情况下，TL 效应的幅度是否存在一些差异。我们检查了 100 名熟练的成年读者，他们阅读包含正确、TL 或 SL 预览的句子。当读者的注视触发不可见边界时，预览会被正确的目标词替换。评估了认知技能，并通过主成分分析（PCA）基于重叠方差进行分组，然后用于预测每种条件的眼动测量值。与先前的文献一致，成年读者通常被发现比字母身份更灵活地编码字母位置。根据认知技能的个体差异，在 TL 效应的幅度方面，成年人之间很少发现差异。字母位置编码的灵活性似乎在熟练的成年读者中达到成熟（或接近成熟）。
