TY - GEN
T1 - The Effect of expertise and biscriptalism on letter perception
T2 - 39th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society: Computational Foundations of Cognition, CogSci 2017
AU - Wiley, Robert W.
AU - Rapp, Brenda
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© CogSci 2017.
PY - 2017
Y1 - 2017
N2 - Previous work has demonstrated that the visual complexity of letter-shapes is processed differently by naïve and expert observers. Specifically, fluent readers of the Arabic alphabet were found to discriminate complex letters more readily than less complex letters, whereas naïve observers exhibited the opposite effect. This “complexity benefit”, wherein complex letters confer a processing advantage to expert observers, is not yet well understood. In a new study, we investigate whether this effect generalizes across scripts, and whether it is unique to individuals with biscriptal experience (knowledge of reading two different scripts). The results of the three experiments confirm that the complexity benefit is characteristic of expert monoscriptal and biscriptal readers, and that, furthermore, there may be a biscriptal advantage in processing visual complexity.
AB - Previous work has demonstrated that the visual complexity of letter-shapes is processed differently by naïve and expert observers. Specifically, fluent readers of the Arabic alphabet were found to discriminate complex letters more readily than less complex letters, whereas naïve observers exhibited the opposite effect. This “complexity benefit”, wherein complex letters confer a processing advantage to expert observers, is not yet well understood. In a new study, we investigate whether this effect generalizes across scripts, and whether it is unique to individuals with biscriptal experience (knowledge of reading two different scripts). The results of the three experiments confirm that the complexity benefit is characteristic of expert monoscriptal and biscriptal readers, and that, furthermore, there may be a biscriptal advantage in processing visual complexity.
KW - biscriptal
KW - orthography
KW - perceptual expertise
KW - visual complexity
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85139555872&partnerID=8YFLogxK
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M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:85139555872
T3 - CogSci 2017 - Proceedings of the 39th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society: Computational Foundations of Cognition
SP - 1339
EP - 1344
BT - CogSci 2017 - Proceedings of the 39th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society
PB - The Cognitive Science Society
Y2 - 26 July 2017 through 29 July 2017
ER -