Detection errors onthe andand: Evidence for reading units larger than the word

Abstract
In 5 experiments, subjects read 100-word passages and circled instances of a given target letter, letter group, or word. In each case subjects made a disproportionate number of detection errors on the common function words "the" and "and". The predominance of errors on these 2 words was reduced for passages in which the words were placed in an inappropriate syntactic context and for passages in which word-group identification was disturbed by the use of mixed typecases or a list, rather than a paragraph, format. These effects for the word "and" were not found for the control word "ant". Familiar word sequences may be read in units larger than the word, probably short syntactic phrases or word frames. A tentative model of the reading process is proposed.

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