A Note on the Informativeness of Parts of Words

Abstract

The experiment reported in this paper was designed to determine which part of a printed word is most useful to a reader as a basis for recognition of the whole word. Versions of ninety common English nouns were prepared in which typographical reversals were inserted at the beginning, middle or end of the word. These were then presented in a tachistoscope to subjects who were asked to recognize the words. The results of the experiment showed that an error in the beginning of a word is significantly more disruptive of recognition than an error in the middle or the end of a word and that an error at the end is more disruptive than an error in the middle.