Abstract:

This study investigated how the positional probabilities of initial and final characters influence the flexibility of position coding in two-character word identification and its temporal dynamics. Two parallel experiments were conducted using a masked priming lexical decision task, manipulating priming conditions (original word priming, transposed priming, unrelated priming) and priming durations (80 ms, 150 ms, 300 ms). Experiment 1 manipulated the positional probability of the initial character while keeping the final character constant, whereas Experiment 2 manipulated the positional probability of the final character while keeping the initial character constant. A total of 144 college students participated. The results revealed that: (1) The flexibility of word position coding persisted throughout the entire word identification process. (2) Both initial and final character positional probabilities influenced word identification, but the effect of final character positional probability lasted longer. (3) The positional probability of the initial character, but not the final character, modulated the flexibility of position coding. Specifically, when the priming duration was 150 ms, words with initial characters frequently used in the initial position exhibited more flexible position coding. These findings suggested that the positional probability of the initial character is related to the flexibility of position coding in word identification, whereas the positional probability of the final character is unrelated to such flexibility.

Key words: transposed-character effect, character positional probability, character position encoding, two-character word identification