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MINI REVIEW article

Front. Psychol.
Sec. Cognition
Volume 15 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1399237

Submitted as a Mini Review article The Reicher-Wheeler Paradigm in Word Recognition Research: A Cautionary Note on its Actual Contributions and Published Misconceptions

Provisionally accepted
Timothy R. Jordan Timothy R. Jordan 1*Aziz M. Akkaya Aziz M. Akkaya 1Fatma Z. Göçmüş Fatma Z. Göçmüş 1Aleynanur Kalan Aleynanur Kalan 1Ebru Morgul Ebru Morgul 1Kübra Önalan Kübra Önalan 1Mercedes K. Sheen Mercedes K. Sheen 2
  • 1 Ibn Haldun University, Istanbul, Türkiye
  • 2 Heriot-Watt University Dubai, Dubai, United Arab Emirates

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    The study of word recognition has been influenced greatly by findings obtained when visual stimuli are presented very briefly. Under these conditions, a great deal of evidence suggests that words are perceived better than nonwords, and even single letters, and it is generally accepted that these "word superiority effects" reflect the relative efficiency with which words are perceived. For more than 50 years, a key procedure for establishing these effects has been the Reicher-Wheeler Paradigm in which potentially confounding effects of non-perceptual guesswork are cleverly suppressed. More recently, however, the actual nature of the Reicher-Wheeler paradigm and its contribution to research have become misrepresented in a range of publications, and its use in experiments has been confused and conflated with other, less sophisticated procedures. In this article we describe the actual contributions made by the Reicher-Wheeler Paradigm to word recognition research and show examples of how these important contributions have been misunderstood and misconceived in experiments reported in the recent literature.

    Keywords: Reicher-Wheeler paradigm, word recognition, Visual word perception, Word Superiority Effects, misconceptions

    Received: 11 Mar 2024; Accepted: 02 Oct 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Jordan, Akkaya, Göçmüş, Kalan, Morgul, Önalan and Sheen. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Timothy R. Jordan, Ibn Haldun University, Istanbul, Türkiye

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.