Effect of apparent resemblance of the Persian letters on their visual recognition

Document Type : .

Authors

1 Tehran University

2 PHD Student of Linguistics - Tehran University

Abstract

This article aimed to investigate the Persian letter similarities based on a phonological approach and the extent to which it affects visual letter recognition while reading, and defining a confusion matrix for the letters. Presenting a new classification according to the similarities of the letters can help to control the errors which occur as a result of letter similarities. The experiment was designed using the E-prime version 2.0, and two Alternative Forced Choice method in accordance with the Persian phonology and writing system. 55 visual minimal pairs were chosen for the test. The first consonant-vowel string of the distractor was introduced as a pre-mask to participants, next the target and the post-mask were presented and at the end the target and the distractor were shown to investigate the recognition of the target by the participants. By examining the participant’s visual and morphological perceptions simultaneously, the statistical descriptive indices and Xi square analysis on effect of age, gender and morphological structure showed that similar letters were more often mistaken in visual recognition than non-similar letters.

Keywords

Full Text

فایل پی دی اف را دریافت نمایید

References

Abu-Rabia, S., & J. Awwad (2004). "Morphological structures in visual word recognition: The case of Arabic". Journal of Research in Reading. 27(3), 321-336.
Arunachalam, S. (2013). "Experimental methods for linguists". Language and Linguistics Compass. 7(4), 221-232.
Azzam, R. (1989). "Orthography and reading of the Arabic language". Reading and writing disorders in different orthographic systems. P. G. Aaron & R. Malatesha Joshi (eds.), Dordrecht: Springer, 203-218.
Baluch, B. (2006). "Persian orthography and its relation to literacy". Handbook of orthography and literacy. 365-376.
Baluch, B., & M. Danaye-Tousi (2006). "Spelling transparency and its impact on dyslexic and unimpaired children's memory for words". Annals of Dyslexia. 56(2), 319-334.
Boudelaa, S., M. Perea, & M. Carreiras (2020). "Matrices of the frequency and similarity of Arabic letters and allographs". Behavior Research Methods. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13428-020-01353-z.
Changizi, M. A., & S. Shimojo (2005). "Character complexity and redundancy in writing systems over human history". Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B: Biological Sciences. 272 (1560), 267-275.
Greenwald, A. G., S. C. Draine, & R. L. Abrams (1996). "Three cognitive markers of unconscious semantic activation". Science. 273(5282), 1699-1702.
Mueller, S. T., & C. T. Weidemann (2012). "Alphabetic letter identification: Effects of perceivability, similarity, and bias". Acta psychologica. 139 (1), 19-37.
Rogers, H. (2005). Writing systems: A linguistic approach. Oxford: Blackwell.
Sampson, G. (1985). Writing systems. London: Hutchinson.
Treiman, R., & B. Kessler (2005). "Writing Systems and Spelling Development". Blackwell handbooks of developmental psychology. The science of reading: A handbook. M. J. Snowling & C. Hulme (Eds.), Blackwell Publishing, 120–134.
Wiley, R. W., C. Wilson, & B. Rapp (2016). "The effects of alphabet and expertise on letter perception.  Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance. 42(8), 1186–1203.
Yule, G. (2016). The study of language. Cambridge: Cambridge university press, 6th edition.
 
 

Files

Share

How to cite

Statistics