Cascading feature analysis as described here may well be very much like what we really do when reading, except that we probably don’t read letter by letter. It sounds outrageous at first but the fact is that we do not need to identify every letter fully in order to read. It is even probable that we cannot read to meaning and separately identify letters both at the same time. Consider figure 2.3 for a moment.
Figure 2.3 An ‘ambiguous’ figure.
Well, what did you see? This is, of course, the old cliché; either two faces or a thing like a vase. Please note, though, that you could not see both at the same time (Smith 2004 p. 18). You saw either the two faces or the vase, never (it is impossible) both at the same time. In other words, you may either see letters or words, but you can’t see them simultaneously. It is not possible to see a visual stimulus as two different things at the same time. You may see different things in the same stimulus (you may see letters, or you may see words), but you cannot see them both at the same time. This dictum applies to text as to everything else, of course. (Spreading activation and onward processing may allow you to infer, or reconstruct, detail, but initial appreciation cannot be of two aspects of a stimulus at once.)
You are also probably familiar with the entertaining example of whole-word reading, as opposed to letter reading, which turned up in my email one astonishing morning. It read something like figure 2.4:
Try reading this!
Aoccdrnig to rseerach at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer in waht oderr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoant tnihg is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can still raed it wouthit dfificluty. Tihs is bcuseae the hmuan mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Amzanig huh?
Figure 2.4 Writing in ‘Jumble’.
It was easy for all to see, from this astonishing email, that when we read we read whole words straight to meaning, much of the time. Fluent readers are obviously not much concerned with individual letters or their placement in words. If I had written this book in ‘jumble’ you would be fluent readers in it by now. You would only falter with new or difficult words such as hippocampus, or Caerphilly perhaps. (It should be mentioned that the reference to research at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy is misleading. It’s an urban myth. The email is still very instructive fun, though.)