ABSTRACT
According to the partialinformation hypothesis, good readers should make primarily visual confusions on the visual task and phonetic confusions on the phonetic task. The confusion data support the partial-information hypothesis. Good readers made significant numbers of phonetic confusions on the short-term memory task and significant numbers of visual confusions on the whole-report task. Poor readers made random errors on both tasks. Although the experiment just described offers support for the partial-information hypothesis, there remains substantial evidence in the literature in favor of a phonetic-deficit hypothesis or against a visual-deficit hypothesis. According to the partial-information hypothesis, good readers should make a higher percentage of hits than poor readers. partial information was of limited value and good and poor readers performed similarly. Identifying old items on a recognition test should profit from the use of partial information and good readers were superior to poor readers.
