ABSTRACT
This paper deals with the role of attention in letter and word recognition, and in particular with Treisman’s feature integration theory. The key proposal is that serial processing is needed to arrange perceptual parts into wholes. Stimulus sets are developed to deal with the arrangement of strokes in letters, and of letters in words. In tachistoscopic report, there is no general loss of the relative location of stimulus parts. Cross-talk between objects occurs for words but not letters. Visual search using letters can be parallel, at least when nontargets are homogeneous. This applies even when nontarget strokes might be rearranged within the letter to form the target. With words, though, there is no hint of parallel search. Both unattended, peripheral letters and words prime identification of a central stimulus, even when they cannot be recognised. Priming depends mainly on the stimulus parts in a display, not their conjunctions. The results provide several difficulties for feature integration theory, as well as its traditional alternatives. Other proposals are considered briefly.
