Can non-monitored words be processed peripherally?

In the gender congruency task (a Stroop-like task), participants are shown a male or a female stick figure appearing with either a congruent (“male” for a male picture) or an incongruent (“female” for a male picture) word. Participants were required to identify the stick figure by responding with a buttonpress as accurately and quickly as possible. Words appeared either separately (Experiment 1) or superimposed on the figure (Experiment 2). Figures appeared in one of five locations (at the center and six and three visual degrees to the right and left of fixation). Congruent stimuli were responded to faster than incongruent stimuli. Yet this congruency effect was impacted by the position of the stick figure relative to fixation, suggesting that the nonmonitored words are at least in part read and processed peripherally and that the conflict may be identified already at fixation