Recent research has found that the omission of accent marks in Spanish does not produce slower word identification times in go/no-go lexical decision and semantic categorization tasks [e.g., cárcel = carcel], thus suggesting that vowels like á and a are represented by the same orthographic units during word recognition and reading. However, there is a discrepant finding with the yes/no lexical decision task, where the words with the omitted accent mark produced longer response times than the words with the accent (...) mark. In Experiment 1, we examined this discrepant finding by running a yes/no lexical decision experiment comparing the effects for words and non-words. Results showed slower response times for the words with omitted accent mark than for those with the accent mark present, thus suggesting a bias toward a “word” response for accented items in the yes/no lexical decision task. To test this interpretation, Experiment 2 used the same stimuli with a blocked design and a go/no-go lexical decision task. Results showed similar response times to words regardless of whether the accent mark was omitted. This pattern strongly suggests that the longer response times to words with an omitted accent mark in yes/no lexical decision experiments are a task-dependent effect rather than a genuine reading cost. (shrink)

We qualify Frost's proposals regarding letter-position coding in visual word recognition and the universal model of reading. First, we show that perceptual uncertainty regarding letter position is not tied to European languages – instead it is a general property of the cognitive system. Second, we argue that a universal model of reading should incorporate a developmental view of the reading process.

Reichle et al. argue that the mechanism that determines where to fixate the eyes is controlled mostly by low-level processes. Therefore, unlike other competing models (e.g., the SWIFT model), the E-Z Reader model cannot account for “global” regressions as a result of linguistic difficulties. We argue that the model needs to be extended to account for regressive saccades.