Not all visual expertise is holistic, but it may be leftist: the case of Chinese character recognition.
We examined whether two purportedly face-specific effects, holistic processing and the left-side bias, can also be observed in expert-level processing of Chinese characters, which are logographic and share many properties with faces. Non-Chinese readers (novices) perceived these characters more holistically than Chinese readers (experts). Chinese readers had a better awareness of the components of characters, which were not clearly separable to novices. This finding suggests that holistic processing is not a marker of general visual expertise; rather, holistic processing depends on the features of the stimuli and the tasks typically performed on them. In contrast, results for the left-side bias were similar to those obtained in studies of face perception. Chinese readers exhibited a left-side bias in the perception of mirror-symmetric characters, whereas novices did not; this effect was also reflected in eye fixations. Thus, the left-side bias may be a marker of visual expertise.
Hsiao
Janet H
JH
Department of Psychology, University of Hong Kong. jhsiao@hku.hk
Cottrell
Garrison W
GW
D000328:Adult; D044466:Asian People; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual; D014794:Visual Fields; D014796:Visual Perception