Changing circumstance : how flexible is lexical access?

We can do a lot with words. Reading a word can trigger a poignant recollection of things past. A word can fascinate us because of the way it sounds or even looks. A word can delight us because of the way it fits a context so perfectly. It is clear that we can be extremely flexible in the way that we process words. In this chapter, we pose the question of whether this processing flexibility extends to all aspects of word processing. Specifically, we focus on the basic process of word recognition and review evidence and arguments about the extent to which factors such as context, task requirements, and participant expectancies play a role. Below we describe how even for the highly specified domain of word recognition the issue of the interaction of cognition, memory and perception is important.