This was unexpected insofar as 2nd graders are widely thought to not be affected by words around the one they are reading, while 5th graders are thought to qualitatively resemble adult skilled readers (who are actually less affected by unknown characters than by real words).
- Dzan Zelihic, Laoura Ziaka, Bob McMurray, Angeliki Altani, Kristin Simonsen, & Athanassios Protopapas (2026). Children's visual word recognition is hampered by adjacent stimuli. Cognition, 274. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2026.106581
This publication follows up on our recent findings demonstrating that word recognition by adult skilled readers is hindered by adjacent stimuli:
- Laoura Ziaka, Dzan Zelihic, Bob McMurray, Keith Baxelbaum, Kristin Simonsen, & Athanasios Protopapas (2025). Visual word recognition is impeded by adjacent words. Journal of Memory and Language, 143. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jml.2025.104641
- Dzan Zelihic, Stefania Kyriakidou, Laoura Ziaka, Bob McMurray, & Athanassios Protopapas (2026). Interference from adjacent words in visual word recognition. Journal of Memory and Language, 149. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jml.2026.104761