Estudillo, A. J. 1 , García-Orza, J. 2 & Perea, M. . 3
1 University of Edinburgh
2 Universidad de Málaga
3 Universitat de València
The mechanisms involved in letter position coding have been the focus of an intense research in the last decade. Recent evidence have shown that when two letters/digits/symbols are switched in a string (e.g., jugde-judge; 1492-1942; *?$&-*$?&), the resulting strings are perceptually similar to each other, and produce a sizeable masked priming effect with the masked priming same-different task. However, a parallel effect does not occur for strings of pseudoletters (García-Orza, Perea, & Muñoz, 2010). These data suggest that the position coding mechanism involved in letter position coding is imprecise and is not specific to letters (at least would be involved in the processing of strings composed of other alphanumeric stimuli). In the present study, we examined whether masked transposition effects are specific to alphanumeric stimuli or, alternatively, whether masked transposition effects can also occur with strings composed of other “objects”, namely, line drawings of common objects (Experiment 1), and geometrical shapes (Experiment 2). Results showed a significant masked transposition priming effects for geometrical shapes, but not for line-drawings of common objects. These findings suggest that the mechanism involved in coding position in masked priming only works with perceptually simple, familiar “objects” (i.e., letters, numbers, symbols, or geometrical shapes), once their identities have been well attained.