Basic processes in reading: Spatial attention as a necessary preliminary to orthographic and semantic processing

Abstract

The question of whether words can be identified without spatial attention has been a topic of considerable interest over the last five and a half decades, but the literature has yielded mixed conclusions. The present experiments manipulated the proportion of valid trials (the proportion of trials in which a cue appeared in the same location as the upcoming target word) so as to encourage distributed (50% valid cues; Experiments 1 and 3) or focused (100% valid cues; Experiments 2 and 4) spatial attention in a priming-type paradigm. Participants read aloud a target word, and the impact of a simultaneously presented distractor word was assessed. Semantic and orthographic priming effects were present when conditions promoted distributed spatial attention but absent when conditions promoted focused spatial attention. In contrast, Experiment 5 yielded a distractor word effect in the 100% valid cue condition when subjects identified a colour (Stroop task). We take these results to suggest that (1) spatial attention is a necessary preliminary to visual word recognition and (2) examining the role of spatial attention in the context of the Stroop task may have few implications for basic processes in reading because colour processing makes fewer demands on spatial attention than does visual word recognition.

Keywords:

• Reading
• Spatial attention
• Visual word recognition

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) graduate scholarship to SW and by NSERC Grants A0998 and 18395 to DB and JAS, respectively. We thank R. S. McCann and several anonymous reviewers for comments.

Notes

¹The results of the present experiments are also consistent with those of Musch and Klauer (2001), who used a similar paradigm to investigate the putative automaticity of affective processing in the evaluative decision task. Musch and Klauer manipulated the focus of spatial attention across groups using a cueing paradigm. In the “distributed attention condition”, the cues that preceded the target display were always presented at fixation and never appeared at the target location (0% valid). In the “focused attention condition”, the cues that preceded the target display were always presented at the target location (100% valid). Participants were asked to evaluate the affective valence of the target stimulus, while distractors were presented elsewhere in the display. These distractors could be affectively congruent with the target stimulus, affectively neutral, or affectively incongruent with the target stimulus. Participants in the distributed attention condition were significantly more accurate when distractors were congruent compared to when distractors were incongruent, displaying the standard affective congruency effect. However, this effect was eliminated in the focused attention condition. Although the tasks are different (evaluative judgement vs. reading aloud) and Musch and Klauer did not examine potential effects in RTs, their data converges on the conclusion that when attention is optimally focused, distractor words presented outside of the focus of spatial attention do not influence target processing.