The involvement of letter names in the silent processing of isolated letters: A developmental perspective

Abstract

This study was designed to clarify the nature of the mental representations underlying the processing of letters. A total of 96 Hebrew readers randomly recruited from three levels of education were asked to make rapid same/different judgments for Hebrew letter dyads with monosyllabic and bisyllabic names. The results obtained from the performance of participants under perceptual and conceptual processing conditions suggest that Hebrew readers access nominal letter representations in order to mediate letter processing in tasks that cannot be resolved on the basis of a sheer perceptual analysis of the letters' visual properties. The finding that the retrieval of nominal letter representations was evident for participants who differed rather markedly in their letter-processing speeds highlights the central role of letter names in the processing of isolated letters.

Letter Visibility and the Optimal Viewing Position Effect of Isolated Connected and Un-Connected Letters in Arabic

“…Several possible forms of mental representations (categories) have been suggested in the literature as underlying the processing of isolated lett ers (Miller & Vaknin, 2012): (1) abstract visual representations that depict the critical visual features of lett ers (e.g., Mycroft et al, 2002;Posner & Mitchell, 1967); (2) abstract phonemic representations that represent the critical phonological characteristics of how lett ers are pronounced (e.g., Carrasco et al, 1988); (3) abstract nominal Unauthenticated Download Date | 5/10/18 4:59 PM representations that is, lett er names (e.g., Posner & Mitchell, 1967); and (4) abstract non-code-specifi c representations that refl ect the convention that two diff erent lett er shapes (e.g., A a) are the same lett er (e.g., Kinoshita & Kaplan, 2008;Miozzo & Caramazza, 1998). It is worth mentioning that in the Arabic alphabet, the words for the diff erent lett ers have similar voice onsets.…”