Search

Soares, Lages, Oliveira, and Cabrera-Hernández (2019) recently showed that the mirror-letter interference effect observed for words containing reversal letters was reliable for words containing left-oriented mirror-letters as 'd', but not for words containing right-oriented mirror-letters as 'b', thus indicating that the directionality of the reversal letters cannot be disregarded when examining the cost of suppressing the mirror-generalization mechanism at the early stages of visual word recognition. Here we examined whether this bias can also be observed for left-oriented non-reversal letters such as 'g', 'j', and 'z', which just as 'd' are also prone to errors in writing in left-to-right orthographies as European Portuguese (EP). Thirty-six EP skilled readers performed a lexical decision task combined with a masked-priming paradigm in which target words containing either left-oriented (e.g., 'g', genial) or right-oriented (e.g., 'c', casual) non-reversal letters were preceded by 50 ms primes that could be the same as the target (genial-genial, casual-casual), nonword primes in which the critical letter was replaced by the mirror-image of the left- or right-oriented non-reversal letter ([reverse g]enial-genial, [reverse c]asual-casual), or nonword primes in which the critical letter was replaced by the mirror-image of another left-oriented or right-oriented non-reversal letter as control ([character omitted]enial-genial, [character omitted]asual-casual). Results showed that the amount of priming produced by identity primes and mirror-image primes was virtually the same for words with left-oriented (e.g., genial-genial = [reverse g]enial-genial), but not for words with right-oriented non-reversal letters (e.g., casual-casual > [reverse c]asual-casual), hence extending the right-oriented bias observed for words containing reversal letters to words containing non-reversal letters.

Recent research has shown an advantage of consonants at early stages of visual word recognition (C-bias), although the locus of this effect remains elusive. Here we examine whether the C-bias is affected by the consonant letters' features. Skilled readers performed a masked priming lexical decision task in which target words containing only either consonants without any ascending/descending features (flat words, canino [canine]) or consonants with ascending/descending features (non-flat words, palito [toothpick]) were preceded by briefly (50 ms) presented primes that could preserve the same consonants of the targets (cenune-CANINO, pelute-PALITO), the same vowels of the targets (raxizo-CANINO, fajibo-PALITO), or, as controls, unrelated (ruxuze-CANINO, fejube-PALITO) and identity primes (canino-CANINO, palito-PALITO). The case in which prime-target pairs were presented was also manipulated (lower-upper vs. upper-lower). Results showed that in both case conditions flat words were recognized faster than non-flat words. Evidence for the C-bias was observed both for flat and non-flat words in the lower-upper condition, in which a vowel inhibitory priming effect was also observed for non-flat words. In the upper-lower condition, however, the C-bias was restricted to flat words. These findings suggest that letter features play a role in the C-bias and ask for amendments in current models of visual word recognition. • Several masked-priming studies provide evidence for the C-bias, though the locus of the effect remains elusive. • Since consonants present ascending/descending letter features we tested their role on the C-bias. • Flat and non-flat words were presented either in lower-upper or upper-lower case. • Evidence for the C-bias was observed both for flat and non-flat words in the lower-upper condition. • In the upper-lower condition the C-bias was restricted to flat words. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]