ABSTRACT
Across the literature on visual word recognition, one of the most widely respected features of English orthography is its sequential redundancy. The fact of this redundancy can be demonstrated statistically (Shannon, 1948). Its psychological reality is evidenced by the relative ease with which good readers can encode sequentially redundant non words as compared to arbitrary strings of letters (e.g., Adams, 1979a; Baron & Thurston, 1973; Gibson, Pick, Osser, & Hammond, 1962; Johnston & McClelland, 1974; Krueger, 1979; Massaro, Venezky, & Taylor, 1979; Mewhort, 1974; Miller, Bruner, & Postman, 1954). Its psychological importance is implicated by evidence that this advantage is generally depressed or absent among poor readers (e.g., Adams 1979b; Frederiksen, 1978). Not surprisingly, means for recognizing and taking advantage of orthographic redundancy have come to reside at the core of many current theories about the knowledge and processes involved in word recognition (e.g., Adams, 1979a; Estes, 1975a,b; Johnston, 1978; LaBerge & Samuels, 1974; Massaro, 1975; McClelland, 1976; Rumelhart & Siple, 1974; Smith, 1971).
