Letter-similarity effects in braille word recognition

Abstract

Letter-similarity effects are elusive with common words in lexical decision experiments: viotin and viocin (base word: violin) produce similar error rates and rejection latencies. However, they are robust for stimuli often presented with the same appearance (e.g., misspelled logotypes such as anazon [base word: amazon] produce more errors and longer latencies than atazon). Here, we examine whether letter-similarity effects occur in reading braille. The rationale is that braille is a writing system in which the sensory information is processed in qualitatively different ways than in visual reading: the form of the word's letters is highly stable due to the standardization of braille and the sensing of characters is transient and somewhat serial. Hence, we hypothesized that the letter similarity effect would be sizeable with misspelled common words in braille, unlike the visual modality. To test this hypothesis, we conducted a lexical decision experiment with blind adult braille readers. Pseudowords were created by replacing one letter of a word with a tactually-similar or dissimilar letter in braille following a tactile similarity matrix (Baciero et al., 2021a; e.g., [ausor] vs. [aucor]; baseword: [autor]). Bayesian linear mixed-effects models showed that the responses to tactually-similar pseudowords were less accurate than to tactually-dissimilar pseudowords—the RTs showed a parallel trend. This finding supports the idea that, when reading braille, the mapping of input information onto abstract letter representations is done through a noisy channel (Norris & Kinoshita, 2012).

TouchScope: A Passive-Haptic Device to Investigate Tactile Perception Using a Refreshable Braille Display

“…They found that transposed-letter pseudowords were classified less accurately and slower than replaced-letter pseudowords, showing that the noise associated with letter position coding in word recognition is not purely perceptual, and supporting the idea that serial order processing is a universal mechanism. In the second study (Baciero et al 2022b), mispelled braille words were classified less accurately when the replaced letter was tactually similar to the original letter than when it was dissimilar 5 , thus revealing that the uncertainty during letter encoding in braille word recognition is not resolved as quickly as with common words in visual-word recognition (see Perea et al, 2022).…”

“…While there was a strong flanker effect, its temporal dynamics differ from those results found in the visual modality, thus suggesting the cognitive mechanisms that underlie this effect are guided by both modality-general and modality-specific processes. To examine braille orthographic processing, Baciero et al (2022aBaciero et al ( , 2022b tested skilled braille readers in two lexical decision studies. In the first one they created pseudowords by either transposing or replacing two adjacent letters of a word (e.g., aveinda vs. avearda, respectively.…”

One more trip to Barcetona: on the special status of visual similarity effects in city names

“…In addition, the representation of stimuli that keep some homogeneity in the visual format, like city names can be susceptible (to a lesser degree) to visual elements (e.g., Barcetona would activate Barcelona more than Barcesona, at least with relatively brief exposure durations). Interestingly, this interpretation can easily explain why misspellings in common words in braille produce a tactile letter similarity effect (Baciero et al, 2022 ): braille letters have a characteristic homogeneous format (e.g., see UK Association for Accessible Formats, 2017 ), thus making them more sensitive to perceptual effects.…”