Letter processing and font information during reading: beyond distinctiveness, where vision meets design

Letter identification is a critical front end of the reading process. In general, conceptualizations of the identification process have emphasized arbitrary sets of distinctive features. However, a richer view of letter processing incorporates principles from the field of type design, including an emphasis on uniformities across letters within a font. The importance of uniformities is supported by a small body of research indicating that consistency of font increases letter identification efficiency. We review design concepts and the relevant literature, with the goal of stimulating further thinking about letter processing during reading

On the role of the upper part of words in lexical access : evidence with masked priming

More than 100 years ago, Huey (1908) indicated that the upper part of words was more relevant for perception than the lower part. Here we examined whether mutilated words, in their upper/lower portions (e.g., , , , ), can automatically access their word units in the mental lexicon. To that end, we conducted four masked repetition priming experiments with the lexical decision task. Results showed that mutilated primes produced a sizeable masked repetition priming effect. Furthermore, the magnitude of the masked repetition priming effect was greater when the upper part of the primes was preserved than when the lower portion was preserved –this was the case not only when the mutilated words were presented in lowercase but also when the mutilated words were presented in uppercase. Taken together, these findings suggest that the front-end of computational models of visual-word recognition should be modified to provide a more realistic account at the level of letter features.The research reported in this article has been partially supported by Grant PSI2008-04069/PSIC and CONSOLIDER-INGENIO2010 CSD2008-00048 from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation and by Grant PTDC/PSI-PCO/104671/2008 from the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology

Holistic Processing of Words Modulated by Reading Experience

Perceptual expertise has been studied intensively with faces and object categories involving detailed individuation. A common finding is that experience in fulfilling the task demand of fine, subordinate-level discrimination between highly similar instances is associated with the development of holistic processing. This study examines whether holistic processing is also engaged by expert word recognition, which is thought to involve coarser, basic-level processing that is more part-based. We adopted a paradigm widely used for faces – the composite task, and found clear evidence of holistic processing for English words. A second experiment further showed that holistic processing for words was sensitive to the amount of experience with the language concerned (native vs. second-language readers) and with the specific stimuli (words vs. pseudowords). The adoption of a paradigm from the face perception literature to the study of expert word perception is important for further comparison between perceptual expertise with words and face-like expertise

Facilitatory Priming of Scene Layout Depends on Prior Experience with the Scene

Facilitatory scene priming is the positive effect of a scene prime on the immediately subsequent spatial processing of a related target, relative to control primes. In the present experiments, a large set of scenes were presented, each several times. The accuracy of a relational spatial-layout judgment was the main measure (which of two probes in a scene was closer?). The effect of scene primes on sensitivity was near zero for the first presentation of a scene; advantages for scene primes occurred only after two or three presentations. In addition, a bias effect emerged in reaction times for novel scenes. These results imply that facilitatory scene priming requires learning and is top-down in nature. Scene priming may require the consolidation of interscene relations in a memory representation

Przedsiębiorstwo Budowy Szybów (Shaft Sinking Company) - non-standard tasks in shaft construction

W grudniu 2003 roku Kopex SA zawarł kontrakt na pogłębienie szybu głównego oraz wykonanie i wyposażenie wyrobisk towarzyszących w kopalni rudy miedzi i cynku Cayeli Bakir Isletmeleri w Turcji. W ramach zadania polegającego na udostępnieniu nowego poziomu wydobywczego od grudnia 2003 do sierpnia 2007 r. PBSz SA wykonał kompleksowe roboty w branży górniczej i mechanicznej. Zakres robót obejmował: pogłębienie o 286 m czynnego szybu wydobywczego o średnicy 5,5 m, wykonanie i wyposażenie komory podszybia, kieszeni skipowej, przekopu przenośnikowego, komory rozdzielni, pompowni głównej na nowym poziomie wydobywczym, głębienie szybików skośnych - przepustów rudy oraz wentylacyjnego, wydrążenie ok. 1000 m wyrobisk kamiennych z zastosowaniem torkretowanej obudowy kotwowej. Przy głębieniu szybu i szybików oraz wykonaniu obiektów towarzyszących i drążeniu wyrobisk w szerokim zakresie zastosowano technologie z wykorzystaniem otworów wielkośrednicowych wierconych oraz wykonanych z wykorzystaniem technik strzałowych. Zastosowane technologie pozwoliły zrealizować nietypowe zadania budownictwa podziemnego.In December 2003 Kopex SA concluded a Contract for main shaft deepening, construction and furnishing of support excavations at Cayeli Bakir Isletmeleri Zink and Copper Ore Mine in Turkey. From December 2003 till August 2007, PBSz SA carried out complete work in mining and mechanical branches, within the confines of a project consisting in opening-out a new production level. The scope of work included: deepening by 286 m an operating production shaft of 5.5 m diameter, construction and furnishing of shaft station room, skip pocket, conveyor drift, electric substation room and main pump room on the new production level, sinking of oblique ore passes and a ventilation raise, driving approx. 1000 m of stone headings with the application of shotcreted anchor support. During the shaft and ore pass sinking, the construction of support structures and driving of headings procedure employing the techniques of large diameter hole drilling and blasting were applied at a wide range. The procedure applied allowed the carrying out non-standard tasks in shaft construction

A Robust Visual Method for Assessing the Relative Performance of Edge Detection Algorithms

A new method for evaluating edge detection algorithms is presented and applied to measure the relative performance of algorithms by Canny, Nalwa-Binford, Iverson-Zucker, Bergholm, and Rothwell. The basic measure of performance is a visual rating score which indicates the perceived quality of the edges for identifying an object. The process of evaluating edge detection algorithms with this performance measure requires the collection of a set of gray-scale images, optimizing the input parameters for each algorithm, conducting visual evaluation experiments and applying statistical analysis methods. The novel aspect of this work is the use of a visual task and real images of complex scenes in evaluating edge detectors. The method is appealing because, by definition, the results agree with visual evaluations of the edge images

Looking for a Structural Network: Effects of Changing Size and Style on Letter Recognition

The accuracy of identifying backward-masked strings of unrelated letters was measured to test a prediction of a structural network model in which information about the absolute size of letters in a font is factored out from other types of information and is represented by a single size parameter. In this model, variation from block to block in the font size should be handled relatively easily by changing this parameter. In contrast, variation in several aspects of the font style would require changing multiple parameters and should be more difficult. In three experiments, the font was alternated in style, size, size and style, or not at all, at the end of each block of eight trials. The accuracy was lower overall when the font was varied, but contrary to the predictions of the model, variation in size reduced the accuracy of performance as much as did variation in style and variation in size and style