Word Superiority Effect

In cognitive psychology, the word superiority effect (WSE) refers to the phenomenon that people have better recognition of letters presented within words as compared to isolated letters and to letters presented within nonword (orthographically illegal, unpronounceable letter array) strings Studies have also found a WSE when letter identification within words is compared to letter identification within pseudowords (e.g. "WOSK") and pseudohomophones (e.g. "WERK").

The effect was first described by Cattell (1886), and important contributions came from Reicher (1969) and Wheeler (1970). Cattell first wrote, "I find it takes about twice as long to read…words which have no connexion as words which make sentences, and letters which have no connexions as letters which make words. When the words make sentences and the letters words, not only do the processes of seeing and naming overlap, but by one mental effort the subject can recognize a whole group of words or letters".

G. Reicher and D. Wheeler developed the basic experimental paradigm to study the WSE, referred to as the Reicher-Wheeler Paradigm. In this paradigm, an observer is presented with a word or nonword string that is followed by a mask (brief stimulus to measure effects on behavior) . The observer is then asked to name one of the letters from the cued position in that word or string making the test a two-alternative forced choice (2-AFC). For example, for the letter R in the word "card", an observer might be asked to choose between the letter R and T, and will usually be more efficient in doing so than if they are asked to make the same choice with the string of letters such as "cqrd". Each possible completion with the two possible letters in the word condition produce a word.

The WSE has since been exhaustively studied in the context of cognitive processes involved during reading. Large amounts of research have also been done to try to model the effect using connectionist networks.