Are brand names special words? Letter visual‐similarity affects the identification of brand names, but not common words

Abstract

Brand names are often considered a special type of words of special relevance to examine the role of visual codes during reading: unlike common words, brand names are typically presented with the same letter‐case configuration (e.g., IKEA, adidas). Recently, Pathak et al. (European Journal of Marketing, 2019, 53, 2109) found an effect of visual similarity for misspelled brand names when the participants had to decide whether the brand name was spelled correctly or not (e.g., tacebook [baseword: facebook] was responded more slowly and less accurately than xacebook). This finding is at odds with both orthographically based visual‐word recognition models and prior experiments using misspelled common words (e.g., viotin [baseword: violin] is identified as fast as viocin). To solve this puzzle, we designed two experiments in which the participants had to decide whether the presented item was written correctly. In Experiment 1, following a procedure similar to Pathak et al. (European Journal of Marketing, 2019, 53, 2109), we examined the effect of visual similarity on misspelled brand names with/without graphical information (e.g., anazon vs. atazon [baseword: amazon]). Experiment 2 was parallel to Experiment 1, but we focused on misspelled common words (e.g., anarillo vs. atarillo; baseword: amarillo [yellow in Spanish]). Results showed a sizeable effect of visual similarity on misspelled brand names – regardless of their graphical information, but not on misspelled common words. These findings suggest that visual codes play a greater role when identifying brand names than common words. We examined how models of visual‐word recognition can account for this dissociation.

Letter-similarity effects in braille word recognition

“…Critically, these models assume that abstract letter identities are equally confusable with each other. Consistent with this tenet, prior lexical decision studies have shown that both accuracy and response times to pseudowords created by replacing a single letter from a baseword are remarkably alike regardless of whether the replacement involves a similar letter (e.g., viotin [baseword: violin]) or a different letter (e.g., viocin ) in both skilled readers and developing readers ( Perea & Panadero, 2014 ; see also Perea, Baciero, et al, 2022 , and Gutierrez-Sigut et al, 2022 , for converging behavioural and electrophysiological evidence, respectively). Clearly, if visual, non-abstract elements had played a relevant role during word recognition, it would have been more difficult to reject viotin as a word than viocin .…”

“… Pathak et al (2019) found that misspelled logotypes like anazon (original logo: amazon ) produced more errors and longer latencies than misspelled logotypes like atazon —note that n is more visually similar than t to the m in a m azon. Perea, Baciero, et al (2022) replicated this finding using another set of logotypes; critically, they found no evidence of a letter-similarity effect in parallel experiments with misspelled common words (e.g., amarillo [yellow in Spanish]; anarillo = atarillo ). They argued that logos, being typically presented in a single typeface and design, were more susceptible to the effects of perceptual factors than common words.…”

“…[paper] is always presented in that format; instead, visually presented common words can have different physical characteristics (e.g., paper = paper = PAPER). This lack of variability among braille letters may make braille reading more susceptible to the influence of perceptual factors (see Perea, Baciero, et al, 2022, for evidence with logos and brand names).…”

Psycholinguistics: Analysis of Knowledge Domains on Children’s Language Acquisition, Production, Comprehension, and Dissolution

“…Regarding the most recent works by the authors who receive the most citations, some of them, including Rickheit [ 107 ], Herrmann [ 122 ], and Brysbaert [ 91 ], address general topics such as the history of psycholinguistics [ 107 ], language use [ 122 ], reading [ 123 ], and individual differences [ 124 , 125 ]. Other authors, such as Levelt [ 3 ], address more specific topics, including visual word recognition [ 126 ], semantic frames [ 127 ], bilingualism [ 128 ], and grammar learning [ 129 ].…”

Misspelled Logotypes: The Hidden Threat to Brand Identity

“…They claimed that this boost in the size of the transposed-letter effect for misspelled logotypes was due to the inherent characteristics of logotypes: logotypes are typically consistent across contexts, featuring a speci c and recognizable letter case, typeface, and color combination. Perea et al 13,14 proposed that during the processing of logotypes, readers encode abstract orthographic information (i.e., letter identity and order) and information arising from the graphical design of the brand name.…”