Enantiomorphy through the looking glass: Literacy effects on mirror-image discrimination.

Kolinsky, Régine; Verhaeghe, Arlette; Fernandes, Tânia; Mengarda, Elias José; Grimm-Cabral, Loni; Morais, José

doi:10.1037/a0022168

Cited by 76 publications

(88 citation statements)

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“…This mirror invariance mechanism interferes with reading, because a reader needs to distinguish between mirror letters, such as "b" and "d," to access the correct phonology and semantics of the printed words. Indeed, literacy acquisition is associated with a reduction in mirror invariance (22)(23)(24), as well as an enhanced capacity to discriminate mirror images (25).…”

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confidence: 99%

Timing the impact of literacy on visual processing

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et al. 2014

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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Learning to read requires the acquisition of an efficient visual procedure for quickly recognizing fine print. Thus, reading practice could induce a perceptual learning effect in early vision. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in literate and illiterate adults, we previously demonstrated an impact of reading acquisition on both high-and low-level occipitotemporal visual areas, but could not resolve the time course of these effects. To clarify whether literacy affects early vs. late stages of visual processing, we measured event-related potentials to various categories of visual stimuli in healthy adults with variable levels of literacy, including completely illiterate subjects, early-schooled literate subjects, and subjects who learned to read in adulthood (ex-illiterates). The stimuli included written letter strings forming pseudowords, on which literacy is expected to have a major impact, as well as faces, houses, tools, checkerboards, and false fonts. To evaluate the precision with which these stimuli were encoded, we studied repetition effects by presenting the stimuli in pairs composed of repeated, mirrored, or unrelated pictures from the same category. The results indicate that reading ability is correlated with a broad enhancement of early visual processing, including increased repetition suppression, suggesting better exemplar discrimination, and increased mirror discrimination, as early as ∼100-150 ms in the left occipitotemporal region. These effects were found with letter strings and false fonts, but also were partially generalized to other visual categories. Thus, learning to read affects the magnitude, precision, and invariance of early visual processing.reading | brain plasticity | education R eading is a cultural activity in which contemporary humans have considerable training. Fluently accessing the sounds and meanings of written words requires very fast and efficient visual recognition of letter strings, at rates exceeding 100 words/ min. Neuroimaging studies have begun to show how learning to read modulates the functioning of the visual system, from early retinotopic areas (1, 2) to extrastriate occipital and temporal cortex (1, 3, 4). In particular, a restricted region of the left occipitotemporal cortex, the visual word form area (VWFA), is robustly activated when orthographic stimuli are presented to literate subjects.This VWFA activation is reproducible across participants and writing systems (5, 6), even when orthographic stimuli are flashed unconsciously (7). Orthographic processing in the VWFA is thought to be very fast, peaking at ∼170-200 ms (8-10), and is colateralized to the dominant hemisphere for language (11,12). Reading practice enhances activation of the VWFA (1, 13, 14), even in dyslexic children (15). Reading also modulates nonvisual circuits, such as the spoken language network (1,14,16,17).In addition to these positive effects of learning to read, the theory of neuronal recycling (18) proposes that literacy acquisition also may have a negative "unlearning" e...

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confidence: 99%

Timing the impact of literacy on visual processing

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Ventura

et al. 2014

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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“…Furthermore, adults also make similar mirror-reversal errors when familiar characters are replaced with reversible, unfamiliar, letter-like symbols [17]. As we will discuss in greater detail later, illiterate adults make the same sorts of mistakes as children [56]. Taken together, these results suggest that there is nothing unusual about mirror-reversal errors in reading and writing, either for children or for adults.…”

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confidence: 76%

“…Based on similar observations, Corballis and Beale [79] proposed that mirror discriminability emerges from first acquiring left-right discriminability in the course of learning to distinguish left and right on our own bodies before applying it to the world, objects, and ultimately letters. However, environments are rarely perfectly symmetrical and illiterate adults have no difficulty distinguishing between the sides of their body or navigating in the world, but still make more mirror-reversal errors than literate adults [56,80].…”

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“…It was therefore not specific exposure to language in general that led to a loss of mirror-generalization (and therefore a reduction in mirror-reversal errors), but, rather, exposure to a specific stimulus class for which facing direction was a non-accidental, identifying feature. In a more comprehensive study comparing illiterate, ex-illiterate, and literate adults, participants had to sort cards with pictures of circles with a diagonal drawn through them based on either the size of the circle or the orientation of the diagonal [56]. Sometimes, the second feature was uninformative (e.g., small and large circles with vertical lines); sometimes, the second feature was redundant (e.g., all small circles also had left-tilted lines); and sometimes the features were orthogonal to each other such that if the task was to sort based on the orientation of the lines, both small and large circles had left-tilted lines.…”

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On the Legibility of Mirror-Reflected and Rotated Text

et al. 2017

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Abstract:We happened to observe that text that was reflected about either the horizontal or vertical axis was more difficult to read than text that was reflected about first one and then the other, which amounts to a 180-degree rotation. In this article, we review a number of studies that examine the nature of recognizing reflected and inverted letters, and the frequency of mirror reversal errors (e.g., confusing 'b' for 'd') in children and adults. We explore recent ideas linking the acquisition of literacy with the loss of mirror-invariance, not just for text, but for objects in general. We try to connect these various literatures to examine why certain transformations of text are more difficult to read than others for adults. Keywords: mirror-reversal; left-right reversal; reading; reversal errors; mirrored textRecently, one of us held up a page of printed text ( Figure 1A) to their webcam to take a picture. The camera software by default created a mirror-image snapshot (i.e., the text was reflected or mirrored about the vertical axis, Figure 1B) thereby rendering the text virtually illegible. Correcting or undoing this sort of reflection can be trivially accomplished using any number of image processing software packages that include built-in functions such as 'reflect vertical', 'reflect horizontal', 'rotate left', and 'rotate right'. It was with some surprise that when the wrong function was accidentally applied and instead of reflecting along the vertical axis, the image was reflected along the horizontal axis, the text, although now reflected twice, was now more easily legible ( Figure 1D). It is of note that this 'double reflection' is equivalent to a 180 • rotation of the text. With only a few mouse clicks, it was clear that when normally-oriented text is mirror reflected about the horizontal axis it again becomes virtually illegible ( Figure 1C). This brief series of webcam-picture inspired observations demonstrated a basic property of text perception and reading: the legibility of text is reflection variant and rotation invariant.Inspired by these observations, we conducted a review of the corresponding work on the intersection of symmetry, reflections, and the legibility of text. We found a large body of literature on mirror-reading and writing; mirror-reversal errors of single letters in reading, copying, and writing; many studies on perception of normal and mirrored single characters; but only a small number of studies on combinations of geometric transformations including both inversion (up-down mirroring) and reflection (left-right mirroring). In this paper, we review the literature on mirror-reversals and inversions of text and synthesize some recent work and ideas on how representational mirror-invariance not only for letters but also for objects may be lost when someone learns how to read.

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“…Studies of the effect of mirror-image reversals on mental processing have explored both the cultural differences in the significance attributed to mirror images in written contexts and the impact that writing systems have on individuals' perception of image reversals (see Danziger and Pederson, 1998;Kolinsky et al, 2011). Danziger and Pederson (1998), for example, studied the acceptance or rejection of mirror images among both literate and non-literate native speakers from a wide variety of linguistic and cultural backgrounds.…”

Section: Mirrors and Cognitionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reflection as transformation: mirror-image structure on Maya monumental texts as a visual metaphor for ritual participation*

Matsumoto¹

2013

Estudios de Cultura Maya

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Resumen: Pese a la estructura inusual de las inscripciones monumentales de los antiguos mayas, que se escribían como si los glifos se reflejaran en un espejo, todavía falta un análisis a fondo de la forma de estos textos. Después de analizar 11 monumentos, propongo que las inscripciones de forma especular constituían metáforas visuales cuyo significado estaba vinculado con el significado ritual de los espejos como símbolos del poder político y religioso. Además, el significado metafórico de estos textos influía en cómo el espectador entendía y se relacionaba con el monumento. Con base en evidencias de la arqueología, la epigrafía, la iconografía, la lingüística y la ciencia cognitiva, sostengo que la forma especular de estas inscripciones extendía la participación ritual del espectador maya para ponerlo en contacto con lo sobrenatural. Con este estudio espero inspirar más investigaciones sobre la relación entre forma y función en los monumentos de los antiguos mayas.PalabRas clave: Inscripción especular, glifos, monumentos, metáfora, participación ritual. abstRact:In spite of their aberrant orientation, ancient Maya monumental hieroglyphic inscriptions that were carved in mirror-image have been relatively understudied by scholars with respect to the significance of their shared form. Based on examination of eleven such monuments, I propose that mirror-image inscriptions constituted visual metaphors related to the ritual importance of artifactual mirrors as symbols of political and religious power. Furthermore, the metaphorical significance of these texts influenced the viewer's interpretation of and interaction with the monument. Using evidence from archaeology, epigraphy, iconography, linguistics, and cognitive science, I argue that the mirror-image form, of these monumental inscriptions, extended ritual participation beyond the monument's protagonist to the ancient Maya viewer through contact with the supernatural. With this work, I hope to begin to fill a significant gap in ancient Maya studies and offer an alternate perspective on the relationship between monumental form and function.

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Enantiomorphy through the looking glass: Literacy effects on mirror-image discrimination.

Cited by 76 publications

References 119 publications

Timing the impact of literacy on visual processing

Timing the impact of literacy on visual processing

On the Legibility of Mirror-Reflected and Rotated Text

Reflection as transformation: mirror-image structure on Maya monumental texts as a visual metaphor for ritual participation*

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