Spatial attention in written word perception

Montani, Veronica; Facoetti, Andrea; Zorzi, Marco · 2014 · Crossref

DOI: 10.3389/fnhum.2014.00042

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Summary

This study investigates the role of visuo-spatial attention in visual word recognition, addressing inconsistent findings in previous literature regarding whether word processing is automatic or attention-dependent. The authors aimed to determine how the allocation of spatial attention influences the perception of letter strings in skilled readers, specifically examining differences between high-frequency words (HFWs), low-frequency words (LFWs), and pseudowords (PWs). The research was motivated by the need to reconcile conflicting results from prior studies using spatial cueing paradigms and to test assumptions made by computational models of reading, such as the CDP+ model, which posits that phonological decoding requires focused spatial attention. The experiment involved twenty undergraduate participants who performed a perceptual identification task. Stimuli were eight-letter strings presented briefly (80 ms) in either the left or right parafoveal visual field. Spatial attention was manipulated using a cue presented 80 ms before the target: a valid cue directed attention to the target location, an invalid cue directed it away, and a neutral cue (a broad string of hash marks) covered both potential locations. Participants reported the perceived string via keyboard. Data were analyzed using mixed-effects multiple regression models to account for random variability at both the subject and item levels, assessing accuracy based on correctly reported letters. The results revealed significant main effects for string type, spatial cue, and visual field, with a crucial interaction between string type and spatial cue. Performance was generally superior in the right visual field. For pseudowords, particularly in the left visual field, accuracy was significantly higher when attention was validly cued to the target location compared to invalid or neutral conditions. This indicates that processing unfamiliar strings benefits from focused spatial attention. In contrast, high-frequency words showed a distinct pattern: accuracy was highest in the neutral condition, where attention was broadly distributed across both potential locations, and lower in both valid and invalid conditions. Low-frequency words showed no significant cueing effects, though mean accuracies trended similarly to pseudowords. These findings suggest that spatial attention is flexibly engaged during reading depending on stimulus familiarity. The facilitation of pseudoword processing by focused attention supports the hypothesis that phonological decoding relies on a serial, left-to-right sweep of attention across sub-lexical units. Conversely, the advantage of broad attention for high-frequency words implies that familiar word recognition utilizes a default mode of broad attentional distribution, likely engaging the broad receptive fields of higher-level detectors in the visual word form area. The study concludes that attention is not merely a bottleneck but a resource dynamically allocated according to the specific processing demands of the stimulus, providing empirical support for dual-route models of reading aloud.

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