Clark, C. , Guediche, S. & Lallier, M.
BCBL. Basque Centre on Cognition, Brain and Language
Decreased letter spacing creates a noisy visual input that impedes visual word recognition due to the effect of crowding. In contrast, semantic context supports visual word recognition especially when stimulus quality is degraded. Research also suggests that reading ability in children may modulate interactions between stimulus quality and semantic context. To better understand the mechanisms underlying these effects during normal reading, the current study manipulated the degree of visual crowding, lexicality, and congruency of an auditory sentence context in two lexical decision tasks, with adult skilled readers. Furthermore, we examined the relationship between reading skill and effects of crowding, lexicality, and congruency of an auditory sentence context. Replicating prior work, lexicality interacted with crowding effects. In addition, we showed that effects of an auditory sentence context and crowding in visual word recognition are related to reading skill in adults.