The Limited Impact of Exposure Duration on Holistic Word Processing

• Main Authors: Changming eChen, Najam ul Hasan eAbbasi, Song eShuang, Hong eLi, Jie eChen
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Frontiers Media S.A. 2016-06-01
• Series: Frontiers in Psychology
• Subjects: word recognition; Signal detection theory; holistic processing; composite task; Chinese character
• Online Access: http://journal.frontiersin.org/Journal/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00646/full

The current study explored the impact of stimuli exposure duration on holistic word processing measured by the complete composite paradigm (CPc paradigm). The participants were asked to match the cued target parts of two characters which were presented for either a long (600 ms) or a short duration (170 ms). They were also tested by two popular versions of the CPc paradigm: the early-fixed task where the attention cue was visible from the beginning of each trial at a fixed position, and the delayed-random task where the cue showed up after the study character at random locations. The holistic word effect, as indexed by the alignment×congruency interaction, was identified in both tasks and was unaffected by the stimuli duration in both tasks. Meanwhile, the delayed-random task did not bring about larger holistic word effect than the early-fixed task. These results suggest the exposure duration (from around 150 ms to 600 ms) has a limited impact on the holistic word effect, and have methodological implications for experiment designs in this field.