Do serifs help in comprehension of printed text? An experiment with Cyrillic readers.
The role of serifs for the comprehension of printed text has been controversial in the literature. The analysis was often confounded by the fact that fonts used for comparison have many differences besides being serif or sans-serif. In this study we use fonts from the same foundry and meta family to assess the differences in reading comprehension for Cyrillic readers (n=238). The results show no difference in the speed of reading and the comprehension between the serif and sans-serif texts. This conclusion is consistent with the ecological hypothesis recently formulated for font sizes.
Bashkir State Medical University, Ufa, Russia. la@ufaneuro.org
Leyla
L
Akhmadeeva
Ilnar
I
Tukhvatullin
Boris
B
Veytsman
D032882:Comprehension; D005556:Form Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D011601:Psychophysics; D011932:Reading; D013997:Time Factors