Do small visual angles produce a word superiority effect or differential lateral masking?

The possibility that the word advantages reported by D. Purcell, K. Stanovich, & A. Spector (see LLBA 15/2, 8101684) are not related to the A_E display's lexical properties or the general phenomenon of word superiority, but result from a fortuitous case of differential lateral masking, is supported by results of 5 experiments: experiment 1 (N = 13) & 2 (N = 14) show that A_E word advantages are anomalous, ie, the magnitude of the word superiority effect (WSE) obtained with particular words is not contingent on the presence of a patterned mask; experiment 3 (N = 14) provides direct evidence for differential lateral masking by showing that digit recognition is poorer in the V_H than in the A_E frame; experiments 4 (N = 12) & 5 (N = 14) show that the WSE obtained under these conditions does not generalize to a new set of words & nonwords that produce the same amount of lateral masking. It is concluded that a genuine WSE does not occur under the conditions tested by Purcell & that the WSE has thus not been shown to depend on visual angle. 7 Tables. Modified HA