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Updated: May 24, 2026

Interaction between Phonological and Semantic Processes in Visual Word Recognition using Electrophysiology
Published on: June 29, 2021
Orthographic similarity: the case of "reversed anagrams"
Alison L Morris1, Mary L Still
1Department of Psychology, Iowa State University, W.112 Lagomarcino, Ames, IA 50011-3180, USA. almorris@iastate.edu
Abstract:
How orthographically similar are words such as paws and swap, flow and wolf, or live and evil? According to the letter position coding schemes used in models of visual word recognition, these reversed anagrams are considered to be less similar than words that share letters in the same absolute or relative positions (such as home and hose or plan and lane). Therefore, reversed anagrams should not produce the standard orthographic similarity effects found using substitution neighbors (e.g., home, hose). Simulations using the spatial coding model (Davis, Psychological Review 117, 713-758, 2010), for example, predict an inhibitory masked-priming effect for substitution neighbor word pairs but a null effect for reversed anagrams. Nevertheless, we obtained significant inhibitory priming using both stimulus types (Experiment 1). We also demonstrated that robust repetition blindness can be obtained for reversed anagrams (Experiment 2). Reversed anagrams therefore provide a new test for models of visual word recognition and orthographic similarity.
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