Tânia Fernandes

Schooling in western culture promotes context-free processing

Culture has been shown to influence the way people apprehend their physical environment. Cognitive orientation is more holistic in East Asian cultures, which emphasize relationships and connectedness among objects in the field, than in Western cultures, which are more prone to focus exclusively on the object and its attributes. We investigated whether, beyond, or in conjunction with culture, literacy and/or schooling may also have an influence on this cognitive orientation. Using the Framed-Line Test both in Portugal and in Thailand, we compared literate schooled adults with two groups of unschooled adults: one of illiterates and one of ex-illiterates. As in former studies on Western people, Portuguese-schooled literates were more accurate in the absolute task than in the relative task. In contrast, Portuguese illiterates and ex-illiterates were more accurate in the relative task than in the absolute task. Such an effect of schooling was not observed in the Thai groups, all of whom performed better on the relative task. Thus, the capacity to abstract from contextual information does not stem only from passive exposure to the culture or the physical environment of Western countries. Western schooling, as part of or in addition to culture, is a crucial factor.

The deficit of letter processing in developmental dyslexia: Combining evidence from dyslexics, typical readers, and illiterate adults

To clarify the link between anomalous letter processing and developmental dyslexia, we examined the impact of surrounding contours on letter vs. pseudo-letter processing by three groups of children - phonological dyslexics and two controls, one matched for chronological age, the other for reading level - and three groups of adults differing by schooling and literacy - unschooled illiterates and ex-illiterates, and schooled literates. For pseudo-letters, all groups showed congruence effects (CE: better performance for targets surrounded by a congruent than by an incongruent shape). In contrast, for letters, only dyslexics exhibited a CE, strongly related to their phonological recoding abilities even after partialling out working memory, whereas the reverse held true for the pseudo-letter CE. In illiterate adults, the higher letter knowledge, the smaller their letter CE; their letter processing was immune (to some extent) to inference from surrounding information. The absence of a letter CE in illiterates and the positive CE in dyslexics have their origin in different aspects of the same ability, i.e. phonological recoding.

Statistical information and coarticulation as cues to word boundaries: A matter of signal quality

We investigated how statistical information in the form of transitional probabilities (TPs) interacts with coarticulation, another sublexical cue to word boundaries, and examined the impact of signal quality on the weighting of these cues. In an artificial-language-learning setting, with phonetically intact speech, coarticulation overruled TPs, suggesting the predominance of subsegmental, low-level information. However, whereas the role of coarticulation in segmentation was highly modulated by signal quality, TPs were very resilient to noise. When coarticulation was rendered unreliable by strongly degrading the input with a 10-dB signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), only statistical information drove segmentation. In a more mildly degraded 22-dB SNR condition, in which some acoustic properties were still available, coarticulation was exploited, although with less reliability than in optimal conditions. These results can be interpreted according to a hierarchical approach (Mattys, White, & Melhorn, 2005) in which both the available segmentation cues and the listening conditions have an important role in speech segmentation.

From hand to eye: the role of literacy, familiarity, graspability, and vision-for-action on enantiomorphy.

Literacy in a script with mirrored symbols boosts the ability to discriminate mirror images, i.e., enantiomorphy. In the present study we evaluated the impact of four factors on enantiomorphic abilities: (i) the degree of literacy of the participants; (ii) the familiarity of the material; (iii) the strength of the association between familiar objects and manipulation, i.e., graspability; and (iv) the involvement of vision-for-action in the task. Three groups of adults - unschooled illiterates, unschooled ex-illiterates, and schooled literates - participated in two experiments. In Experiment 1, participants performed a vision-for-perception task, i.e., an orientation-based same-different comparison task, on pictures of familiar objects and geometric shapes. Graspability of familiar objects and unfamiliarity of the stimuli facilitated orientation discrimination, but did not help illiterate participants to overcome their difficulties with enantiomorphy. Compared to a baseline, illiterate adults had the strongest performance drop for mirror images, whereas for plane rotations the performance drop was similar across groups. In Experiment 2, participants performed a vision-for-action task; they were asked to decide which hand they would use to grasp a familiar object according to its current position (e.g., indicating left-hand usage to grasp a cup with the handle on the left side, and right-hand usage for its mirror image). Illiterates were as skillful as literates to perform this task. The present study thus provided three important findings. First, once triggered by literacy, enantiomorphy generalizes to any visual object category, as part of vision-for-perception, i.e., in visual recognition and identification processes. Second, the impact of literacy is much stronger on enantiomorphy than on the processing of other orientation contrasts. Third, in vision-for-action tasks, illiterates are as sensitive as literates to enantiomorphic-related information.

The handle of literacy: evidence from preliterate children and illiterate adults on orientation discrimination of graspable and non-graspable objects

ABSTRACT Prior research reported an apparently developmental trajectory on mirror-image discrimination (Gregory, Landau, & McCloskey, 2011): reflections across the object principal axis (OPA) and across the external vertical axis (EVA) are hard to discriminate by children, but only OPA reflections are problematic for adults. In this study, we investigated how literacy acquisition and object visuomotor properties affect this trajectory. Six-year-old children (preliterate preschoolers vs. first graders: Experiment 1) and illiterate, ex-illiterate, and schooled literate adults (Experiment 2), searched for graspable (e.g. hammer) or non-graspable (e.g. sock) target-objects amongst orientation-contrast distractors. OPA and EVA errors were predominant in non-readers, but EVA errors dropped sharply in readers. Graspability enhanced OPA and EVA mirror-image discrimination, especially in non-readers. Thus, the reduction of EVA mirror-image errors is not driven by maturation, cognitive development, or schooling; the underlying mechanisms are mostly learning to read and to a smaller extent the operation of the dorsal stream.

The Word Composite Effect Depends on Abstract Lexical Representations But Not Surface Features Like Case and Font

Prior studies have shown that words show a composite effect: When readers perform a same-different matching task on a target-part of a word, performance is affected by the irrelevant part, whose influence is severely reduced when the two parts are misaligned. However, the locus of this word composite effect is largely unknown. To enlighten it, in two experiments, Portuguese readers performed the composite task on letter strings: in Experiment 1, in written words varying in surface features (between-participants: courier, notera, alternating-cAsE), and in Experiment 2 in pseudowords. The word composite effect, signaled by a significant interaction between alignment of the two word parts and congruence between parts was found in the three conditions of Experiment 1, being unaffected by NoVeLtY of the configuration or by handwritten form. This effect seems to have a lexical locus, given that in Experiment 2 only the main effect of congruence between parts was significant and was not modulated by alignment. Indeed, the cross-experiment analysis showed that words presented stronger congruence effects than pseudowords only in the aligned condition, because when misaligned the whole lexical item configuration was disrupted. Therefore, the word composite effect strongly depends on abstract lexical representations, as it is unaffected by surface features and is specific to lexical items.

The 1-min Screening Test for Reading Problems in College Students: Psychometric Properties of the 1-min TIL: Psychometric Properties of the 1-min TIL

Reading is a central cognitive domain, but little research has been devoted to standardized tests for adults. We, thus, examined the psychometric properties of the 1-min version of Teste de Idade de Leitura (Reading Age Test; 1-min TIL), the Portuguese version of Lobrot L3 test, in three experiments with college students: typical readers in Experiment 1A and B, dyslexic readers and chronological age controls in Experiment 2. In Experiment 1A, test-retest reliability and convergent validity were evaluated in 185 students. Reliability was >.70, and phonological decoding underpinned 1-min TIL. In Experiment 1B, internal consistency was assessed by presenting two 45-s versions of the test to 19 students, and performance in these versions was significantly associated (r = .78). In Experiment 2, construct validity, criterion validity and clinical utility of 1-min TIL were investigated. A multiple regression analysis corroborated construct validity; both phonological decoding and listening comprehension were reliable predictors of 1-min TIL scores. Logistic regression and receiver operating characteristics analyses revealed the high accuracy of this test in distinguishing dyslexic from typical readers. Therefore, the 1-min TIL, which assesses reading comprehension and potential reading difficulties in college students, has the necessary psychometric properties to become a useful screening instrument in neuropsychological assessment and research. Copyright

The development of holistic face processing: An evaluation with the complete design of the composite task

The composite paradigm is widely used to quantify holistic processing (HP) of faces: participants perform a sequential same-different task on one half (e.g., top) of a test-face relative to the corresponding half of a study-face. There is, however, debate regarding the appropriate design in this task. In the partial design, the irrelevant halves (e.g., bottom) of test- and study-faces are always different; an alignment effect indexes HP. In the complete design, besides alignment, congruency between the irrelevant and critical halves of the test-face is manipulated regarding the same/different response status of the study-face. The HP indexed in the complete design does not confound congruency and alignment and has good construct and convergent validities. De Heering, Houthuys, & Rossion (2007) argued that HP is mature as early as 4-year-olds but employed the partial design. Here we revisit this claim, testing four groups of 4- to 9/10 year-old children and two groups of adults. We found evidence of HP only from 6-year-olds on when considering the complete design, whereas significant alignment effects were found in the index adopted in the partial design already in 4-year-olds but which we demonstrate that reflects other factors besides HP, including response bias associated with congruency.

Editorial: The impact of learning to read on visual processing

In 1892, Dejerine published the first report of pure alexia (Dejerine, 1892). Monsieur C. became unable to read in the absence of any other cognitive disorder (even writing was preserved) after a lesion of the inferior occipitotemporal cortex, a neural region dedicated to visual recognition. Although reading is an intense visual ability, the relation between reading and visual processing has often been sell short. It was only ~100 years after the report of Monsieur C. that part of this occipitotemporal region was coined visual word-form area, VWFA (Warrington and Shallice, 1980; see also Cohen et al., 2000; Polk and Farah, 2002). Since then an emergent bulk of research has demonstrated that learning to read, not only leads to the emergence of a specialized neurocognitive circuitry, but also impacts on the evolutionary older and pre-existing neurocognitive system of visual (non-linguistic) object recognition. Many questions regarding the exact nature, locus, and consequences of this impact are in debate or still unanswered. This Research Topic was aimed at setting a landmark forum on which researchers present and discuss recent work, their proposals, and open novel questions. We have compiled nine excellent articles on the relation between visual processing and literacy acquisition, reading development, and developmental dyslexia. This research topic is organized into three parts. In the first part, opening this research topic, in an opinion article, Zhou et al. (2014) consider the relation between visual skills and learning to read, and the moderator role of the visual complexity of the written script in this equation (e.g., Chinese makes stronger demands of visual skills due to its complexity than alphabetic scripts). Qian and Bi (2014) argue that the visual complexity of the script modulates the expression of visual processing deficits (namely, in magnocellular processing) in developmental dyslexia. They examined the association between motion processing (in a coherent motion task, underpinned by V5/MT functioning) and reading (in a visual lexical decision task) in Chinese dyslexic children and chronological-age controls. Second, regarding the emergence of a neurocognitive system specialized in letter processing, in a hypothesis and theory article, Lachmann and van Leeuwen (2014) propose the functional coordination approach. According to this hypothesis learning to read captures the analytic strategy of visual processing, which was already available before literacy took place, but then becomes the preference mode in letter processing. In their research article, Lachmann et al. (2014) used the Navon test to examine whether, when the hierarchical stimulus (a global figure composed of local figures) is presented at fixation with dimensions close to those in written text, letters compared to non-letters are processed using an analytic strategy instead of the usual holistic strategy adopted on hierarchical stimuli. In the last part of this Research Topic, the impact of literacy on non-linguistic visual processing is considered. Indeed, according to the neuronal recycling hypothesis (Dehaene, 2009) the ventral occipitotemporal regions, originally devoted to object recognition, are partially recycled to accommodate literacy, with spillover effects on the former function. In a large-scale developmental study, Santi et al. (2015) show that the impact of learning to read on visual skills is not observed at a macro behavioral level assessed with general educational/neuropsychological tests. Note, however, that studies that reported an impact of literacy on general spatial skills have examined children learning to read scripts differing on visual complexity (e.g., Zhou et al., 2014, in this research topic), but this was not the case in Santi et al.: all children were learning the alphabetic English orthography. This might seem, however, inconsistent with the neuronal recycling hypothesis (Dehaene, 2009). Indeed, a key question, discussed in the last four articles of this collection, is to understand which aspects of visual processing are actually affected by literacy acquisition and why. Possibly only the visual properties that collide with learning to read are affected. This is the case of mirror invariance: lateral mirror images, such as d and b, are originally processed as equivalent percepts. Kolinsky and Fernandes (2014; following the prior work of Pegado et al., 2014) examined whether learning to read is able to modify the object recognition system as expressed by a loss of mirror invariance, by comparing the orientation cost for mirror images (e.g., ⌉-⌈) vs. plane-rotations (to which the visual system is originally sensitive to; e.g., ⌉-⌊), in identity-based same-different judgments of illiterate, late literate, and early literate adults. In the same vein, using transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) during identity-based same-different judgments, Nakamura et al. (2014) demonstrated the causal role of the left occipitotemporal cortex (comprising the VWFA) in mirror discrimination of visual words by literate Japanese adults. In their opinion article, Pegado et al. (2014) set a multisystem learning framework to answer how mirror discrimination is acquired during learning to read. They propose that a tight functional link between the visual and motor systems is crucial for this acquisition. Finally, given that literacy acquisition also impacts on face recognition due to competition for neural space (cf. Dehaene, 2009), in an opinion article, Ventura (2014) reviews these evidence, discusses the possible reasons for this competition, and proposes new directions considering literacy as a form of visual expertise. Taken together, these articles represent an update overview and demonstrate the diversity of approaches in this research topic: miscellaneous scientific backgrounds (e.g., neuroscience, in Nakamura et al., 2014; neuropsychology, in Qian and Bi, 2014; developmental psychology, in Santi et al., 2015; experimental psychology; in Kolinsky and Fernandes, 2014), several techniques (e.g., TMS, Nakamura et al., 2014; behavioral tests, Lachmann et al., 2014; item response models, Santi et al., 2015), various written scripts considered (i.e., studies with alphabetic and non-alphabetic scripts; e.g., Lachmann et al., 2014; Nakamura et al., 2014, respectively), different populations examined (typical vs. dyslexic readers, in Qian and Bi, 2014; adults of varying schooling and literacy levels, in Kolinsky and Fernandes, 2014). These articles are Dejerines legacy as pieces of the (still incomplete) puzzle on the impact of literacy on visual processing, which will hopefully contribute to understand the reasons behind this impact.