The grammar of action and children's printing.

166 children, kindergarten through Grade 2 (mean ages 5 yrs 4 mo to 7 yrs 11 mo), were asked to reproduce the 26 uppercase and 26 lowercase letters and the numbers 1–9. The resulting stroke patterns obtained from the kindergartners supported predictions derived from the starting, progression, and horizontal rules expressed in the "grammar of action." However, other predictions based on the way Ss of these ages are said to resolve conflicts among these rules were not supported. Similarly, predictions regarding the influence of formal printing instruction in school on the subsequent printing stroke patterns used by the 1st and 2nd graders were not confirmed. An alternative to the grammar of action is proposed to explain these various findings and the general uniformity that children show when they print letters and numbers and copy geometric figures. (7 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Letters as spatial-oriented shapes and/or graphemic signs: a developmental study of left- and right-handed girls during the period of learning to read

This study is concerned with the problem of hemispheric specialization and/or cooperation in relation to development and manual laterality. The processing of alphabetic signs and its relationship to interhemispheric transfer and functional hemispheric asymmetries were studied by comparing left- and right-handed girls during acquisition of reading. The children perform matching tasks with letters having different orientations and with meaningless forms having the same orientations as the letters. Each subject performed the matching under three conditions: right/left intermanual transfer, left/right intermanual transfer, and dichaptic exploration. Results indicate: (1) A differentiated development between the two handednesses. (2) The functional lateralization change was different for left- and right-handed girls, a greater effect of the ability to identify the letter on matching tasks was observed for the right-handed children than for the left-handed children. These last results are discussed with regard to inter-hemispheric transfer and functional hemispheric asymmetry changes. We hypothesized a strategy difference between left- and right-handed girls and a difference in their ability to change their cognitive strategy (left-handers continue to favor a spatial coding with letters).     

Embodied memory judgments: A case of motor fluency.

It is well known that perceptual and conceptual fluency can influence episodic memory judgments. Here, the authors asked whether fluency arising from the motor system also impacts recognition memory. Past research has shown that the perception of letters automatically activates motor programs of typing actions in skilled typists. In this study, expert typists made more false recognition errors to letter dyads which would be easier or more fluent to type than nonfluent dyads, while no typing action was involved (Experiment 1). This effect was minimized with a secondary motor task that implicated the same fingers that would be used to type the presented dyads, but this effect remained with a noninterfering motor task (Experiment 2). Typing novices, as a comparison group, did not show fluency effects in recognition memory. These findings suggest that memory is influenced by covert simulation of actions associated with the items being judged—even when there is no intention to act—and highlight the intimate connections between higher level cognition and action. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Detecting targets in letter and non-letter arrays.

Three experiments with 48 right-handed undergraduates examined the difference between the processing of letter and nonletter arrays using visual search. Results show that (1) letters were processed differently from other shapes; specifically, detection latencies were relatively short for the ends of letter arrays and increased left to right yielding a sloping M-shaped function, whereas the function for nonletter arrays was U-shaped; (2) this result was not restricted to any one nonletter character set, nor is visual familiarity or nameability crucial; and (3) digits produced results comparable to letters. Mechanisms common to word and number processing are advanced to account for this latter finding. The basic letter–shape contrast shows that the letter position function is constrained by processing strategy, not by structural limitations. (French abstract) (28 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Choice reaction-time study assessing the verbal behavior of the minor hemisphere in normal adult humans.

Conducted 2 choice RT experiments in which a total of 12 right-handed college students scanned a memory set of 1 or 6 letters for the presence of a test letter. The memory set was presented binaurally and the test letter visually to either the right or left visual field. S indicated with his left hand whether or not the test letter was contained in the memory set. Results show the RT was shorter for the left visual field test letter when the set contained only 1 letter and for the right visual field test letter when the set contained 6 letters. The possibility that Ss matched the set and test letters visually when the set contained only 1 letter and verbally when the set contained 6 letters is discussed. Results suggest that the minor hemisphere displays little, if any, verbal abilities. (31 ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of structural and naming factors of letters upon the recognition of tachistoscopic letters (author''s transl)

To determine the nature of effects of a preceding letter stimulus upon the recognition of a following letter stimulus, 20 subjects were sequentially and tachistoscopically presented pairs of letters of pairs of random patterns, which consist of the same number of elements, and asked to judge whether they were "same" or "different" in form. Four variable interstimulus intervals (ISI) between the 1st stimuli and the 2nd stimuli were employed as parameters. Results obtained were as follows: (a) percentages of correct responses for the letters were not significantly different from those for the random patterns, and (b) percentages of correct responses for the "same" matching tasks were significantly higher than those for the "different" matching tasks, but, differences in number of correct responses between the two tasks diminished as ISI increased. These results reveal structural, rather than naming, effects of preceding letters in the information processing of matching single letters.     

Letter names help children to connect print and speech.

A critical step in the acquisition of literacy involves learning that the printed forms of words symbolize the words' linguistic forms. We propose that children first connect print and speech by noticing links between letters in printed words (e.g., the b of beach) and letter names in the corresponding spoken words (e.g., the /bi/ in the spoken word beach). Support for this proposal comes from 2 experiments in which preschoolers were asked to say the first letters of words. Children were relatively good at telling that beach and beaver began with b and that deaf ended with f. They were less likely to know that bone and bonus began with b and that loaf ended with f. Moreover, some children stated that wife began with y and that seem began with c. These errors reflect the letter names at the beginnings of the spoken words. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Making letters distinctive.

Results of a study with 77 kindergartners, 24 1st graders, 21 2nd graders, and 6 college students show that small graphic changes made in normal letters of the alphabet changed the similarity relations among those letters. All Ss classified letters of this distinctive font faster and with fewer errors than they classified normal letters. It is shown that it is not features alone but relations between features within letters, and relations between letters in the stimulus set, that determine how difficult any particular letter is to classify. The advantage of the distinctive font is such that many children had less difficulty classifying distinctive letters into bins labeled with normal letters than doing the conceptually easier match-to-sample task of placing normal letters into bins labeled with normal letters. (22 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

When writing impairs reading: Letter perception’s susceptibility to motor interference.

The effect of writing on the concurrent visual perception of letters was investigated in a series of studies using an interference paradigm. Participants drew shapes and letters while simultaneously visually identifying letters and shapes embedded in noise. Experiments 1–3 demonstrated that letter perception, but not the perception of shapes, was affected by motor interference. This suggests a strong link between the perception of letters and the neural substrates engaged during writing. The overlap both in category (letter vs. shape) and in the perceptual similarity of the features (straight vs. curvy) of the seen and drawn items determined the amount of interference. Experiment 4 demonstrated that intentional production of letters is not necessary for the interference to occur, because passive movement of the hand in the shape of letters also interfered with letter perception. When passive movements were used, however, only the category of the drawn items (letters vs. shapes), but not the perceptual similarity, had an influence, suggesting that motor representations for letters may selectively influence visual perception of letters through proprioceptive feedback, with an additional influence of perceptual similarity that depends on motor programs. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Memory for position and identity across eye movements.

Used a "transsaccadic" partial report procedure to measure memory for position and identity information across saccades. Delaying the partial-report cue after the eye movement had little effect on report accuracy. Mask presentation hindered recall only at the shortest delay. Accuracy was much higher when the letter array contained 6 letters than when it contained 10 letters. Intra-array errors were much more frequent than extra-array errors. These results suggest that memory across eye movements decays slowly, has a limited capacity, is maskable for a brief time, and retains identity information better than position information. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

From graphemes to abstract letter shapes: levels of representation in written spelling

The letter substitution errors of 2 dysgraphic subjects who, despite relatively intact oral spelling, made well-formed letter substitution errors in written spelling, were studied. Many of these errors bear a general physical similarity to the intended target. Analyses revealed that this similarity apparently was based on the features of the component strokes of letters rather than on visuospatial characteristics. A comparison of these subjects' letter substitution errors with those of 2 other individuals with brain damage, whose damage was at a different level of processing, revealed that the latter subjects' errors are not explicable in terms of stroke-feature similarity. Strong support was found for the computation of multiple representational types in the course of written spelling. This system includes a relatively abstract, effector-independent representational level that specifies the features of the component strokes of letters.     

Probability effects on stimulus evaluation and response processes.

Investigated the effects of probability information on response preparation and stimulus evaluation. Eight Ss responded with 1 hand to the target letter H and with the other to the target letter S. The target letter was surrounded by noise letters that were either the same as or different from the target letter. In 2 conditions, the targets were preceded by a warning stimulus unrelated to the target letter. In 2 other conditions, a warning letter predicted that the same letter or the opposite letter would appear as the imperative stimulus with .80 probability. Correct reactions times (RTs) were faster and error rates were lower when imperative stimuli confirmed the predictions of the warning stimulus. Probability information affected (1) the preparation of motor responses during the foreperiod, (2) the development of expectancies for a particular target letter, and (3) a process sensitive to the identities of letter stimuli but not to their locations. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of stimulus arrangement on hemispheric differences and interhemispheric interaction for processing letter trigrams.

Observers identified consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) nonsense syllables with the letters arranged horizontally. In each of 2 experiments, there were fewer errors when stimuli were presented to the right visual field (RVF) and left hemisphere (LH) than when stimuli were presented to the left visual field (LVF) and right hemisphere (RH), and the extent to which the number of last-letter errors exceeded the number of first-letter errors was greater on LVF/RH than on RVF/LH trials. When the same stimulus was presented simultaneously to both visual fields (Experiment 2), the qualitative error pattern was very similar to the pattern obtained on LVF/RH trials. These effects replicate results obtained in earlier CVC identification experiments with letters arranged vertically. However. when a single stimulus was presented in the center of the visual field (Experiment 1), so that the first letter of the CVC projected to the LVF/RH and the last letter projected to the RVF/LH, the error pattern was a mixture of the LVF/RH and RVF/LH patterns, as if each hemisphere took the lead for processing the letter it received directly. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Role of symmetry in the mirror-image confusions of preschoolers.

64 children between 3 and 5 yrs old were given a location copying task both with a standard and comparison display side by side (horizontally aligned) and with displays aligned along their diagonals. Displays were pegboards of 3 levels of complexity: 2-by-2, 4-by-4, and 6-by-6 holes. Left–right reversals were the predominant errors and were frequent for horizontally aligned displays; left–right reversals were less frequent and performance more accurate for diagonally aligned displays. Only for interior positions on the 6-by-6 hole array were errors other than left–right reversals frequent; and for these positions only, alignment did not influence accuracy. Results fail to support P. Bryant's (1973, 1974) hypothesis that mirror-image confusions are no more frequent than other in-line (in-row) errors and that these errors result from dependence on an in-line comparison strategy. (18 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The effects of foveal load and visual context on peripheral letter recognition

Peripheral letter recognition was examined by presenting subjects with a letter triad centered 7.16 degrees to the right of fixation. At the same time, a single letter was presented at the point of fixation that was either the same as one of the letters in the triad or different from any of the triad letters. On other trials, no letter was presented at the point of fixation. Results supported and extended previous foveal load research. The disruptive effect of foveal load does not depend solely on the presence or absence of a foveal stimulus. Recognition of the first letter in non-words was disrupted when a foveal letter was presented that was different from the peripheral letter. Recognition of the middle letter for both words and non-words was disrupted when a foveal letter was presented that was the same as the middle letter. A significant interaction between foveal letter and triad type was also found. No evidence was found to suggest that recognition of a peripheral letter is significantly better when that same letter is also present at the point of fixation.     

Differentiation of letterlike forms in prereading children.

To investigate the development of perceptual differentiation of writing, 45 nursery school and kindergarten children were asked to label graphic displays varying in features shared with Roman letters and with letter strings. Ss ranged in age from 36 to 77 mo and were divided into 3-, 4-, and 5-yr-old groups, with 15 children in each. Number of writing displays correctly labeled as writing was the dependent variable. Analyses were carried out for displays contrasting on the independent variables of linearity, multiplicity, and variety of letter strings and on degree of similarity to Roman letter units. Significant effects were found for all variables except multiplicity. Developmental patterns support E. J. Gibson's (1969) model of increasing differentiation. Inferences are made about the self-teaching potential for early reading instruction. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Performance of process schizophrenics on tasks involving visual search.

Compared the response times of 32 process schizophrenics and 16 nonhospitalized matched controls on 3 visual search tasks. Exp I involved the location of a target letter within an array of different background letters. Other experiments required a same–different response. Exp II involved the identification of a single different letter set within the uniform context of a square display formed by up to 40 replicates of another letter. Exp III presented 2 3–6 letter clusters in a single horizontal line. The 2 clusters were identical or had 1 different letter. Word and nonword clusters were used. Paranoid and nonparanoid groups did not differ on any measure. Schizophrenic response times were about 1 sec longer, but measures of rate of increase in response time with number of letters displayed did not generally differ significantly between groups. Schizophrenics tended to make more errors. Experimental manipulations affected the response times and error rates of schizophrenics and controls alike, and to much the same degree. Results suggest that process schizophrenics are not abnormally slow when extracting information from visual displays, and they appear to perform operations and strategies similar to those of normals when doing so. (30 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Perceptual span in schizophrenia.

Administered a forced-choice letter recognition task to assess the span of apprehension of 30 schizophrenics (good premorbid paranoids, good premorbid nonparanoids, and poor premorbid nonparanoids) and 20 controls (hospitalized nonschizophrenics and penitentiary inmates). When the task required only that 1 target letter be detected, there were no significant differences between groups. When the target was presented in conjunction with varying numbers of irrelevant "noise" letters, however, the span of schizophrenics was significantly less than that of either control group. The span of schizophrenics reached an upper limit at a small display size (4 letters) and showed no further increase. The constructs of premorbid adjustment and paranoid status bore no relationship to the deficit. Measures of the trial-to-trial variability in number of elements processed and consistency of scanning path did not differentiate schizophrenics and controls. The number of irrelevant noise letters surrounding a target was found to have no influence on detection in either group. (23 ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)