ABSTRACT
Although it is beyond dispute that contextual information plays an important role in reading (and, for that matter, in speech perception), there is much debate about what processing stage or stages it can affect. The major question is whether or not context can influence word recognition. According to the autonomy view, context cannot affect word processing before the processes that lead to recognition of the word have finished. Instead, context is exploited later on, for instance, when the recognized word is to be integrated in the representation of the preceding text. In contrast, the interactive view claims that context does affect the processes leading up to recognition. It may do so by allowing a more cursory or less complete analysis of the information comprised in the stimulus word (e.g., Morton, 1969).
