SUBTRACTIVE METHOD APPLIED TO SEPARATION OF VISUAL AND NAME COMPONENTS OF MULTILETTER ARRAYS

If a stored letter can be matched more rapidly with a physically identical letter (e.g., A A) than with one having only the same name (e.g., A a) the physical match reflects a visual memory code. In the first study the number of letters in store was varied from one to four. The efficiency of the visual code for a given letter is not reduced by the presence of other letters in the array. However, for longer array lengths only some of the letters give evidence of a physical match which is more efficient than a name match. The second set of experiments attempted to manipulate the efficiency of stored visual and name codes. This was done by varying the visual and acoustic similarity of the array. It was found that visually similar arrays reduced the efficiency of the physical match without affecting the name match. This finding indicated that the visual and name codes were separately stored and that these codes were not interrogated serially. © 1969.