• Psycholinguists make a distinction between:
➢ Low level processes which involve the raw data of speech or writing
➢ High level processes which involve shaping this data into meaning.
For example, reading involves two distinct operations:
1. A reader decodes the words on the page, and notes the sequence in which they appear.
2. Once words have been recognized; he / she then has to build meaning at the level of the sentence and at the level of the text as a whole.
These two operations would appear to involve different degrees of attention and even different parts of the brain.
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