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Children's visual word recognition is hampered by adjacent stimuli
Dzan Zelihic1, Laoura Ziaka2, Bob McMurray3
1Department of Special Needs Education, University of Oslo, Norway.
Cognition
|May 17, 2026
Summary
Developing readers are negatively impacted by adjacent words during reading, even if they don't benefit from them. Managing this interference is key to reading skill development.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Psychology
- Developmental Psychology
- Reading Science
Background:
- Skilled readers use parafoveal information, but developing readers' use is limited.
- Lack of parafoveal benefit doesn't mean adjacent stimuli don't interfere with word recognition.
Purpose of the Study:
- Investigate how adjacent stimuli affect word recognition in developing readers.
- Determine if interference from flanking words impacts lexical activation.
Main Methods:
- Two experiments with Norwegian children (Grade 2 and Grade 5).
- Modified visual world paradigm with masked flanked visual word targets.
- Compared conditions with flanking words, unfamiliar-font strings, repeated symbols, and no flankers.
Main Results:
- Flanking words and unfamiliar-font strings interfered with lexical activation of the target word.
- Repeated symbol strings had no effect.
- Advanced readers showed smaller frequency effects when flanked by words (foveal load effects).
Conclusions:
- Adjacent stimuli are processed alongside foveated words, causing interference from early reading stages.
- Management of interference from adjacent words is crucial for reading skill development.
Keywords:
CrowdingInterferenceReading developmentReading fluencyVisual word recognitionVisual world paradigmMore Related Videos
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