g. reicher and d. wheeler developed the basic experimental paradigm to study the wse, referred to as the reicher-wheeler paradigm. in this paradigm, an observer is presented with a word or nonword string that is followed by a mask (brief stimulus to measure effects on behavior) . the observer is then asked to name one of the letters from the cued position in that word or string making the test a two-alternative forced choice (2-afc). for example, for the letter r in the word "card", an observer might be asked to choose between the letter r and t, and will usually be more efficient in doing so than if they are asked to make the same choice with the string of letters such as "cqrd". each possible completion with the two possible letters in the word condition produce a word.