Detection of Kanji words in a rapid serial visual presentation task.

In 3 experiments, lists of 12 Kanji words were rapidly presented in the same position, and participants reported a red target word embedded in green distractor words. Two lists were used: same and different category. A tendency toward category priming was found at longer durations. Frequency of target localization indicated that participants familiar with Kanji had a greater tendency to report the word immediately preceding the target. These pretarget intrusion errors dominated the posttarget intrusion errors, when the luminance of red and green stimuli were equated (Experiment 2), and when the response was recall (Experiments 1 and 2) or recognition (Experiment 3). In contrast, participants unfamiliar with Kanji made posttarget intrusion errors as frequently as pretarget intrusion errors (Experiment 3), suggesting that knowledge of Kanji influences the integration of color and form codes in visual information processing.