Question

When betty (an english speaker) is shown a nonsense string of letters tachistoscopically, she misreads it in a way that follows the rules of common english spelling. this is because
a. all humans are predisposed toward the visual configurations evident in "regular" bigrams; this is why english uses them.
b. of a lifetime of strengthening of the bigram detectors for common english letter pairs.
c. betty is reluctant to give answers that she cannot easily pronounce.
d. of the word superiority effect?

Answer 1

The correct answer would be option b. of a lifetime of strengthening of the bigram detectors for common english letter pairs.

When learning native or a second language, the rules of structures of words are formed like chunks or bigram detectors that indicate some common English letter pairs patterns. When it is stated that Betty misread the string of letters in a way that follows the rules of common English, it is because of the chunks already formed in her brain that tries to fit the letters together in a structure that would make some sense.