Saint-Aubin J, Poirier M
Ecole de Psychologie, Université Laval, Sainte-Foy, Canada.
Mem Cognit. 1997 Sep;25(5):665-76.
When asked to detect target letters while reading continuous text, subjects miss more letters in highly common function words than in less common content words. This is known as the missing-letter effect. According to the structural account, the higher omission rates for frequent function words are attributable to their role in supporting the extraction of phrase structure, after which they become lost in the transition from structure to meaning. This implies that word function in and of itself should affect letter detection accuracy. This issue was examined in four experiments while controlling for a number of confounded factors associated with another influential model: the unitization account. The first experiment extended the missing-letter effect to the French language. The second showed that letter detection is influenced by slight variations in the function assumed by the same word, such as when it is used as a definite article as opposed to a pronoun. This effect was observed even when the frequency of the orthographic pattern and the syllable stress patterns were controlled. In the last two experiments, a control was added for another factor: frequency of word meaning. The results indicate that word function contributes to the missing-letter effect over and above what is contributed by frequency of word meaning.
当要求受试者在阅读连续文本时检测目标字母时，他们在高度常见的功能词中遗漏的字母比在不太常见的实词中更多。这被称为缺字母效应。根据结构理论，频繁出现的功能词较高的遗漏率归因于它们在支持短语结构提取中的作用，在此之后，它们在从结构到意义的转换过程中丢失。这意味着词的功能本身应该会影响字母检测的准确性。在四项实验中对这个问题进行了研究，同时控制了与另一个有影响力的模型——单元化理论相关的一些混淆因素。第一个实验将缺字母效应扩展到了法语。第二个实验表明，字母检测会受到同一个词所承担功能的细微变化的影响，比如当它用作定冠词而不是代词时。即使在控制了正字法模式和音节重音模式的频率后，这种效应仍然存在。在最后两项实验中，增加了对另一个因素的控制：词义频率。结果表明，词的功能对缺字母效应的影响超过了词义频率的影响。
