The Initial Capitalization Superiority Effect in German: Evidence for a Perceptual Frequency Variant of the Orthographic Cue Hypothesis of Visual Word Recognition

Overview

Journal Psychol Res

Specialty Psychology

Date 2008 Oct 9

PMID 18841389

Citations 5

Authors

Arthur M Jacobs

Hans-Christoph Nuerk

Ralf Graf

Mario Braun

Tatjana A Nazir

Affiliations

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Abstract

A perceptual frequency variant of the orthographic cue (OC) hypothesis (Peressotti, Cubelli, & Job, 2003) was tested in two perceptual identification experiments using the variable viewing position technique: German nouns and non-nouns that are most frequently perceived with or without initial letter capitalization, respectively, were tachistoscopically presented in upper-case, lower-case, or with initial capitalization. The results indicated that words were best recognized in the form they are most frequently perceived in, which suggests that during reading acquisition abstract as well as case- and item-specific OCs may be learned and used for recognition.

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