When are Nonwords Easy to See.

A topic of considerable interest in contemporary cognitive psychology concerns the often reported perceptual superiority of familiar stimuli over unfamiliar stimuli, and, more specifically, of familiar words over unfamiliar words or nonword letter-strings. The influences of presentation mode mixed vs. blocked trials and target variability on the detection of target in words and in random letter strings were examined. The results indicated a substantial word superiority effect in mixed lists of words and nonwords that was eliminated when pure lists of words and nonwords were compared. Also, target variability affected the shape of the serial position curve. Other test results are interpreted in terms of strategies and feature learning.