Peripheral-foveal scanning and the identification of heteropalindromes in the visual half-fields

The possible identifying properties of the peripheral-field-to-foveal-field (PFTFF) scan, thought to precede the left-to-right reading scan of English alphabetical arrays, were investigated. Heteropalindromes, letter strings that spell one word when read from left to right but another word when read from right to left, were tachistoscopically exposed in the left or right visual fields of 16 male, dextral college students in each of two experiments. The results support Schissler and Baratta's idea that the scan does not appear to yield detailed stimulus information. We suggest that the direction of this scan is well suited to the requirements of encoding horizontally aligned words, given the acuity/information gradient produced when such stimuli are exposed unilaterally. The direction and operation of the scan prior to the left-to-right reading scan are discussed in terms of an earlier account of the encoding of unilaterally exposed, horizontally aligned English words.