ИСТИНА

Word superiority effect (WSE) refers to the increase in efficiency of letter identification within words as compared to random letter strings and isolated presentation. This apparently object-based phenomenon demonstrates curious interactions with spatial attention we have revealed using a number of attentional paradigms. First, we have directly compared WSE under two forms of inattention towards words: presumably object-based inattention due to the attentional blink and presumably location-based inattention due to the invalid spatial cuing. Second, we have tested consequences of spatial attention redistribution within words. When endogenous spatial attention is diverted from the word as a whole following an invalid cue, there is word superiority equal to that under full attention, providing for no interaction between attention and WSE. At the same time, there are similarities in word processing under full spatial attention and object-based inattention: when attention is occupied by the previous RSVP target stimulus within the attentional blink, both word and pseudoword superiority are observed, just as when attention is focused on the word cued correctly in the spatial cuing paradigm. It seems that only when spatial attention is focused on the word as a whole, orthographic regularity might play a role, whereas out of the focus of spatial attention only word familiarity contributes. On the other hand, spatial redistribution of attention within words using perceptual latency priming disrupts word superiority in the perception of simultaneity. The whole pattern of results supports the idea of the location-based and object-based processing as two levels in the structure of attention.