Is zjudge a better prime for JUDGE than zudge is?: A new evaluation of current orthographic coding models

Three masked priming paradigms, the conventional masked priming lexical-decision task (Forster & Davis, 1984), the sandwich priming task (Lupker & Davis, 2009), and the masked priming same-different task (Norris & Kinoshita, 2008), were used to investigate priming for a given target (e.g., JUDGE) from primes created by either adding a letter to the beginning of the target (e.g., zjudge) or replacing the target’s initial letter (e.g., zudge). Virtually all models of orthographic coding that allow calculation of orthographic similarity measures predict that zjudge should be the better prime because zjudge contains all the letters in JUDGE in their correct order whereas zudge does not. Nonetheless, Adelman et al.’s (2014) megastudy data indicated no difference in the effectiveness of these two prime types. The present experiments provide additional support for the conclusion of no difference between these two prime types with the only observed difference being a small zudge prime advantage in Experiment 1b (sandwich priming). These results suggest that models of orthographic coding/word recognition may be well served by allowing inconsistent information (e.g., the “z” in both zjudge and zudge indicates that the presented prime is not JUDGE) to be given considerable weight during the orthographic coding/word recognition process. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved)Public Significance Statement: To understand the reading process, it is crucial to understand how the orthographic coding process is carried out. Our findings suggest that the importance of negative information in that process (e.g., there is not a “j” in the word being read) has been overlooked in most models of the reading process, implying that the importance of positive information may be being overstated in current models and in reading instruction.