Abstract In the last decades, repeated evidence for graphemic effects has been reported in skilled readers. For example, a letter is more easily detected in a word when it corresponds to a simple grapheme (e.g., A in PLACE) than when it is embedded in a complex one (e.g., A in BEACH). Such effects have been taken as a demonstration that graphemes are processed as perceptual units by the reading system. However, this conclusion has been recently challenged by studies using different experimental designs. In the present study, we used four experimental situations to get a clearer picture of the reliability of graphemic effects. We used four types of tasks: letter detection (Experiment 1), length estimation (Experiment 2), mixing case lexical decision (Experiment 3), and primed lexical decision (Experiments 4 and 5). In each task, the processing of words with complex graphemes (e.g., BEACH) was compared to the processing of words with simple graphemes (e.g., PLACE). Overall, we found no reliable grapheme effect, supporting the claim that graphemes are not perceptual units in skilled visual word recognition. An alternative interpretation of ‘grapheme effects’ previously reported with the letter detection task is discussed.

中文翻译：

---

在熟练的视觉单词识别中，字形效果是真实的吗？

摘要 在过去的几十年里，熟练的读者已经报道了关于石墨烯效应的重复证据。例如，当一个字母对应于一个简单的字素（例如，PLACE 中的 A）时，比将其嵌入复杂的字素（例如，BEACH 中的 A）时，它更容易在单词中检测到。这种效果被认为是字素被阅读系统作为感知单元处理的证明。然而，这一结论最近受到使用不同实验设计的研究的挑战。在本研究中，我们使用了四种实验情况来更清楚地了解字素效应的可靠性。我们使用了四种类型的任务：字母检测（实验 1）、长度估计（实验 2）、混合大小写词法决策（实验 3）和启动词法决策（实验 4 和 5）。在每项任务中，将具有复杂字素（例如，BEACH）的单词的处理与具有简单字素（例如，PLACE）的单词的处理进行比较。总的来说，我们没有发现可靠的字素效应，支持了字素不是熟练视觉词识别中的感知单位的说法。讨论了先前在字母检测任务中报告的“字素效应”的另一种解释。