Perception and Cognition in Reading: Where is the Meeting Point?

It has been common in the history of psychology to think of reading as involving two sets of processes, one that makes visual information available (perceptual processes) and the other that makes use of that information in support of the language processes involved in reading (cognitive processes). Interactive theories of reading (Rumelhart, 1977) have questioned the usefulness of such a distinction, suggesting that each processing activity occurs in the environment of, and can be subject to influences from, all other processing taking place. Recent work, however, has suggested the existence of different processing modules that are not directly influenced by the products of some other processing activities (Fodor, 1983; Frazier & Fodor, 1978). In particular, it has been proposed that the visual processes that make information available are not influenced by higher level processes (Forster, 1979; Stanovich, 1980). This chapter presents some data from a study we have conducted that supports the utility of maintaining a distinction in theories of reading between perceptual processes that make visually-provided information available and cognitive processes that use this information for the purposes of the task at hand.