Cited by 544Neurobiology of Language and BilingualismReading and Literacy DevelopmentFace Recognition and Perception

Demonstrating the implicit processing of visually presented words and pseudowords

Price, C. J., Wise, R. J. S., Frackowiak, R. S. J.·1996·Cerebral Cortex

Abstract

This study demonstrates that even when subjects are instructed to perform a nonlinguistic visual feature detection task, the mere presence of words or pseudowords in the visual field activates a widespread neuronal network that is congruent with classical language areas. The implication of this result is that subjects will process words beyond the functional demands of the task. Therefore, contrasting brain activity in a word task that explicitly requires a cognitive function with a word task in which the function is activated implicitly will not necessarily isolate the brain area of interest. Furthermore, in most brain regions, we found that pseudowords, which have unfamiliar phonological associations and no associated semantic association, produce greater activation than words. Greater brain activity associated with pseudowords illustrates that unfamiliar stimuli that are unable to access word associations may activate the neuronal network more strongly than familiar words for which access occurs with ease.

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1093/cercor/6.1.62

Cites

36 of 36 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Claims the paper makes

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

  • The VWFA demonstrates a form of tuning to learned letter stimuli, which produce greater activity than well-controlled pseudoletters.

    “The response properties of the VWFA demonstrate a form of tuning to learned letter stimuli, which produce greater activity than well-controlled pseudoletters, that can be measured by blocks of PET data [19], as well by the first 200 ms of activity in MEG and intracranial electrical recordings [16].”
  • The VWFA is tuned to the shape of letters, relative to visually equivalent pseudo-letters.

    “First, there are indications that the VWFA is tuned to the shape of letters, relative to visually equivalent pseudo-letters.”

    From Specialization within the ventral stream: the case for the visual word form area (2004) · cites this paper as Price et al. (1996)

  • Price et al. (1996) observed stronger activation in the left fusiform gyrus to strings of consonants than to strings of false-font characters.

    “Following up on the initial insight of Petersen et al. (1990), Price et al. (1996) observed stronger activation in the left fusiform gyrus to strings of consonants than to strings of false-font characters.”

    From Specialization within the ventral stream: the case for the visual word form area (2004) · cites this paper as Price et al. (1996)

  • Price et al. (1996) obtained stronger activations to strings of consonants than to strings of pseudo-letters at coordinates close to the VWFA.

    “For instance, Price et al. (1996) have obtained stronger activations to strings of consonants than to strings of pseudo-letters at coordinates close to the VWFA.”

    From Specialization within the ventral stream: the case for the visual word form area (2004) · cites this paper as Price et al. (1996)

Self-check

Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.

The self-check needs the paper’s full text.

Cites

Flagged first, then by citations

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Authors
Price, C. J., Wise, R. J. S., & Frackowiak, R. S. J.
Affiliations
UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology (GB)
Venue
Cerebral Cortex
Published
1996-01-01
Volume
6
Issue
1
Pages
62-70
ISSN
  • 1047-3211 (ISSN-L)
  • 1460-2199
OpenAlex
W2121629550
Cited by
544
References
36
Citations by year
2026: 1 · 2025: 3 · 2024: 5 · 2023: 4 · 2022: 13 · 2021: 8 · 2020: 6 · 2019: 15 · 2018: 6 · 2017: 10 · 2016: 12 · 2015: 18 · 2014: 18 · 2013: 18 · 2012: 23
FWCI
14.50
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
closed
Locations
  • Cerebral Cortex (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • UCL Discovery (University College London) (submittedVersion)
Funders
Wellcome Trust
Topics
  • Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Neurobiology of Language and Bilingualism
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Reading and Literacy Development
  • Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Face Recognition and Perception
Keywords
pseudowords, visual word recognition, language areas, semantic processing, phonological processing, brain activation
MeSH terms
Brain, Cerebrovascular Circulation, Humans, Photic Stimulation, Tomography, Emission-Computed, Visual Pathways

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review