Holistic word context does not influence holistic processing of artificial objects in an interleaved composite task

Holistic processing, a hallmark of expert processing, has been shown for written words, signaled by the word composite effect, similar to the face composite effect: fluent readers find it difficult to focus on just one half of a written word while ignoring the other half, especially when the two word halves are aligned rather than misaligned. This effect is signaled by a significant interaction between alignment and congruency of the two word parts. Face and visual word recognition, however, involve different neural mechanisms with an opposite hemispheric lateralization. It is then possible that faces and words can both involve holistic processing in their own separate face and word processing systems, but by using different mechanisms. In the present study, we replicated with words a previous study done with faces (Richler, Bukach, & Gauthier, 2009, Experiment 3). In a first experiment we showed that in a composite task with aligned artificial objects, no congruency effects are found. In a second experiment, using an interleaved task, a congruency effect for Ziggerins was induced in trials in which a word was first encoded, but more strongly when it was aligned. However, in a stricter test, we found no differences between the congruency effect for Ziggerins induced by aligned words versus pseudowords. Our results demonstrate that different mechanisms can underlie holistic processing in different expertise domains.