An analysis of reicher-task effects

Three experiments conducted to investigate aspects of the word-nonword version of the Reicher task were motivated, in part, by the recent series of experiments by Prinzmetal (1992). He found a word-superiority effect (WSE) with unlimited exposure durations, in contrast to the typical Reicher-task method involving limited exposures, raising the issue of whether lexical access is involved in the WSE with brief exposures. An interactive-activation account (Rumelhart and McClelland, 1982) might suggest that the feedback from lexical access that would boost the perceptibility of the letters in a word would be more helpful with brief, masked stimulus exposures, with lexical access playing a negligible role with unlimited exposures. Positive evidence for lexical access with brief exposures was found with lexical priming (Experiment 1), homophone spelling (Experiment 2), and pseudohomophone repetition (Experiment 3). The converging evidence also revealed the applicability of the Reicher-task method to a variety of issues central to lexical access and word perception.