Introductory essay for special issue of Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology on Visual Word Recognition research:

“Over the past 30 years, research on visual word recognition has contributed greatly to the understanding of how information is processed, represented, and accessed in the cognitive system. Today, word recognition continues to serve as a rich domain for modelling and investigating core issues in cognition. In addition, research on word recognition has been used to improve assessment and instruction of reading for children and adults. The following paragraphs provide a brief overview of some trends and developments in word recognition research over the past few decades. This overview is not meant to be exhaustive (or unbiased). My intent is to give readers from outside the area a feel for why word recognition is such an, important domain for cognitive research. ”

Starter Links & References: Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology (Dec. 1999) | Online version