Marzouki, Y. 1 , Jouanin, M. 2 & Grainger, J. 3
1 Aix-Marseille University & CNRS
2 Aix-Marseille University
3 CNRS
Two experiments combined exogenous spatial cueing with a letter-in-string identification task in order to examine whether attention could be directed to within-word position independently of retinal location. In Experiment 1, a spatial cue appeared in one of three horizontally aligned boxes mimicking the spatial layout of 3-letter target strings. Cues could be at the same within-string position as the target letter, or at one of the two other positions. Spatial overlap was manipulated by having targets aligned with the boxes, displaced to the left or to the right, or by reducing inter-letter spacing. Spatial cueing effects were found to be driven uniquely by within-string position independently of spatial overlap. Experiment 2 demonstrated that spatial cueing effects disappeared in the displaced and squashed conditions when the boxes were removed, confirming that attention to within-string position was driving the effects in these conditions in Experiment 1. This pattern suggests a key role for object-based attention in letter-in-string identification.