Sentential context modulates early phases of visual word recognition: Evidence from a training manipulation

How does sentential context influence visual word recognition? Recent neural models suggest that single words are recognized via a hierarchy of local combination detectors [1]. Low-level features are extracted first by neurons in V1 in the visual cortex, features are then combined and fed into the higher level of letter fragments in V2, and then letter shapes in V4, and so on. A recent EEG study examining word recognition in context has shown that contextually-driven anticipation can influence this hierarchy of visual word recognition early on [2]. Specifically, a minor mismatch between the predicted visual word form and the actual input (cake vs. ceke) can elicit brain responses ~130 ms after word onset [2]