There has been proposed a simple modular pathway between sensory input (shapes on a page, sound waves in the air). That's the modular processing model, which I'm going to skip over here. On to the more complete interactive processing model, which is informed by the actual architecture of the brain and specific studies:
When you read something, the shapes you see are translated from visual information into concepts. In lexical decision (choosing a word that matches visual input), this is bottom-to-top processing. Basically, when interpreting information, you have to choose a word from your mental dictionary, and the process begins with a prime (first letter & last letter, it would seem).
Simultaneously, there are synapses that send information from the conceptual level to narrow down what word you're perceiving. This way, you don't have to see every letter, or even every word, when you read something.
In other words, one way to save time when perceiving language is essentially to lessen the amount of information that you actually take in, and to increase the amount of higher level processing that contributes to lexical decision. Cool, right? More association cortex, less direct processing.
This could have implications. Do people read faster because they read less? Who learns better, the people who read slower and take in more information, or people who read faster and depend more on their association cortex?
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