Word shape's in poor shape for the race to the lexicon

Current models of fluent reading often assume that fast and automatic word recognition involves the use of supraletter feature corresponding to the envelope or shape of the word when it is printed in lowercase. The advantages of mixed case over pure case and of pure lowercase over pure uppercase have often been taken as evidence favoring the word-shape hypothesis. Alternative explanations for these phenomena are offered. Exp I, with 400 undergraduates, showed that previous demonstrations of word-shape effects during proofreading are better described as individual letter effects. Exps II-IV, with 144 Ss, explored the possibility that word shape facilitates lexical access through uncertainty reduction. In all 3 experiments, performance on words with rare shapes was compared to those with common shapes. There were no effects of shape frequency in either tachistoscopic recognition or lexical-decision tasks. This was true regardless of the degree to which the visual shape cue was supplemented by the nonvisual factors of familiarity and expectancy. Possible reasons why fluent readers ignore word shape are discussed within the framework of a model that assumes that automatic word recognition is mediated by the activation of abstract letter identities. (48 ref)