Font regularity constraints on the process of letter recognition.
Strings of four unrelated letters were presented for subjects to identify, followed by a patterned mask and then a forced choice test of each letter position. In Experiment 1, the type style in the regular conditions was consistent--all of the letters were of a single type font--whereas in the mixed condition, each string contained letters from two type fonts. Compared with the mixed condition, accuracy in the regular conditions was higher overall and increased at a faster rate as a function of processing time. This held across four sessions. In Experiment 2, the font in the mixed condition was varied either between or within letter strings; sizeable advantages for the regular conditions were found with both mix-methods. The results are consistent with the idea of a schemalike perceptual system that becomes tuned to the regularities of a particular font in order to process visual information efficiently.
Sanocki
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Department of Psychology, University of South Florida, Tampa 33620.
D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention; D003463:Cues; D005260:Female; D005556:Form Perception; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual; D011930:Reaction Time; D011932:Reading