High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! In cognitive psychology, the word superiority effect (WSE) refers to the phenomenon that people are more accurate in recognizing a letter in the context of a word than they are when a letter is presented in isolation, or when a letter is presented within a nonword (e.g. "WXRG"). 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").