in cognitive psychology, the word superiority effect (wse) refers to the phenomenon that people have better recognition of letters presented within words as compared to isolated letters and to letters presented within nonword (orthographically illegal, unpronounceable letter array) strings. studies have also found a wse when letter identification within words is compared to letter identification within pseudowords (e.g. "wosk") and pseudohomophones (e.g. "werk").