A new perspective on visual word processing efficiency

•We demonstrate word and pseudoword superiority effects using response times.•We present clear evidence against independent parallel perception of letters in words.•We show that the superiority effects using this approach are not dependent on masking.

As a fundamental part of our daily lives, visual word processing has received much attention in the psychological literature. Despite the well established advantage of perceiving letters in a word or in a pseudoword over letters alone or in random sequences using accuracy, a comparable effect using response times has been elusive. Some researchers continue to question whether the advantage due to word context is perceptual. We use the capacity coefficient, a well established, response time based measure of efficiency to provide evidence of word processing as a particularly efficient perceptual process to complement those results from the accuracy domain.