Activation of lexical codes for simultaneously presented words: modulation by attention and pathway strength

Horizontal and vertical stings were presented in a "crosswords" format within left or right visual fields. Distractor strings were varied to examine the extent to which prelexical, orthographic-phonological, and semantic codes are activated for words not focally attended. The results supported 2 predictions of the pathway strength model of attentional modulation (JD Cohen, K Dunbar & JL McClelland, 1990). First, distractor influences were greater when participants attended to the weaker (ie, vertical) item and ignored the stronger (ie, horizontal) string, than vice versa. Second, distractors similar to the target facilitated, whereas dissimilar distractors interfered with, pronunciation responses. It is concluded that spatial attention can modulate word recognition processes, and that some interesting questions emerge when one abandons the assumptions of serial, noninteractive word recognition processes.