Where is mirror invariance? Masked priming effects by mirrored and rotated transformations of reversible and nonreversible letters

Fernandes, Tânia; Xavier, Eduardo Gonçalves; Domingues, Miguel; Araújo, Susana

doi:10.1016/j.jml.2022.104375

Cited by 8 publications

(25 citation statements)

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“…The latter result is not surprising as plane rotations are well distinguished even by young infants and nonhuman primates (Bornstein et al, 1978;Logothetis et al, 1995). What is interesting is that, in contrast to what was previously found with adult readers, for whom mirrored letters do not have a special status relative to rotated letters (Fernandes et al, 2022), orthographic processing by young readers was still driven by the perceptual biases in charge during visual object recognition (e.g., Bornstein et al, 1978;Logothetis et al, 1995).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 72%

“…orthographic and phonetic uniqueness points, and length (see, Fernandes et al, 2022). The two sets of 192 legal 4-9 letter nonwords included the same critical letters and were used as fillers.…”

Section: Materials and Proceduresmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In this vein, recent studies with fluent adult readers adopted the masked priming paradigm, 3 the gold standard used to investigate the early stages of orthographic processing, and consistently found that mirror invariance is not observed in letter processing in a fully-mature orthographic system (Brossette et al, 2022;Fernandes et al, 2022;Kinoshita & Liong, 2023;Pittrich & Schroeder, 2023). Fernandes et al (2022) capitalized on the fact that reversible letters of the Latin alphabet include mirror-image and plane-rotation pairs with the same 180 • difference (e.g., d-b, and d-p, respectively) to test the claim that mirror letter priming effects reflect the operation of mirror invariance. This proposal would predict that interference for reversible letters and facilitation for nonreversible letters were specific (or at least stronger) for mirrored than for rotated transformations.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Letters away from the looking glass: Developmental trajectory of mirrored and rotated letter processing within words

Fernandes,

Velasco,

Leite

2023

Developmental Science

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Discrimination of reversible mirrored letters (e.g., d and b) poses a challenge when learning to read as it requires overcoming mirror invariance, an evolutionary‐old perceptual tendency of processing mirror images as equivalent. The present study investigated when, in reading development, mirror‐image discrimination becomes automatic during visual word recognition. The developmental trajectory of masked priming effects was investigated from 2nd to 6th grade and in adults, by manipulating letter type (nonreversible; reversible) and prime condition (control; identity; mirrored; rotated). Standardized identity priming increased along reading development. Beginning readers showed mirror invariance during reversible and nonreversible letter processing. A mirror cost (slower word recognition in mirrored‐letter than identity prime condition) was found by 5th‐grade but only for reversible letters. By 6th grade, orthographic processing was no longer captive of mirror invariance. A multiple linear regression showed that letter representations, but not phonological processes or age, were a reliable predictor of the rise of mirror‐image discrimination in 2nd–4th‐graders. The present results suggest a protracted development of automatic mirror‐image discrimination during orthographic processing, contingent upon the quality of abstract letter representations.RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS We traced the developmental trajectory of mirrored‐letter and rotated‐letter priming effects (e.g., ibea and ipea as primes of IDEA) in visual word recognition. Beginning readers (2nd–4th‐graders) showed mirror invariance and plane‐rotation sensitivity in orthographic processing, thus still being susceptible to the perceptual biases in charge in object recognition. A mirror cost was found in 5th‐graders but only for reversible letters; orthographic processing was no longer captive of mirror invariance by 6th‐grade. The automation of mirror‐image discrimination during orthographic processing depends on the quality of letter representations but not on phonological processes or age.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 72%

Section: Materials and Proceduresmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Letters away from the looking glass: Developmental trajectory of mirrored and rotated letter processing within words

Fernandes,

Velasco,

Leite

2023

Developmental Science

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“…Specifically, the different performances between the normal condition and inverted condition/mirrored condition indicated that children had orientation sensitivity to Chinese characters. This orientation sensitivity to Chinese characters caused the ‘inversion effect’ (Kao et al, 2010; Luo et al, 2017; Sun et al, 2022) and ‘mirror cost’ (Ahr et al, 2016; Fernandes and Leite, 2017; Fernandes et al, 2016; Fernandes et al, 2022), which was reflected by the increased efficiency of processing normal characters but decreased speeds in processing inverted and mirrored characters. In the current study, children had longer reaction times in the inverted orientation of Chinese simple characters at the age of 4 years and longer reaction times in the inverted orientation of Chinese compound characters at the age of 5 years.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Development of orientation sensitivity to Chinese characters in preschoolers: Evidence from a longitudinal study

Zhang,

2023

Journal of Chinese Writing Systems

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Recent studies have shown that young children’s orientation sensitivity is correlated with their reading ability. However, the development of orientation sensitivity to Chinese characters with different complexities (e.g., simple characters and compound characters) in preschool children is unknown. To fill this gap, the current three-year longitudinal study aimed to investigate the development of orientation sensitivity to Chinese simple characters and compound characters. A total of 50 Chinese children were first tested at their first kindergarten years (T1: mean age = 3.62 years) and then tested annually on a variety of tasks for three years (T2: mean age = 4.63 years; T3: mean age = 5.58 years). Children’s orientation sensitivity to Chinese characters was assessed using two perceptual-matching tasks. The results showed that the inverted and mirrored orientation sensitivity to Chinese characters demonstrated different developmental trajectories. Specifically, children possessed inverted and mirrored orientation knowledge of Chinese simple characters at the age of 4. They also displayed sensitivity to inverted Chinese compound characters at the age of 5. However, mirrored orientation knowledge of Chinese compound characters did not emerge until the age of 5. These results suggest that children’s inverted orientation knowledge of Chinese characters developed earlier. Moreover, the complexity of Chinese characters affected the development of orientation knowledge of Chinese characters.

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“…Contrary to their data, the present Experiment 1-4 consistently showed a very strong facilitatory mirror priming effect relative to the control prime (b-d , w-d). It is of interest to note that in a study published recently, Fernandes et al (2022) compared priming produced by mirror letter primes (e.g., b-d) and plane-rotated letter primes (e.g., p-d) and found that the former was not any more inhibitory than the latter (b-d , p-d), leading them to conclude that-consistent with our finding here-there is no letter suppression mechanism specific to mirror letters. So why did Perea et al (2011) and Soares et al (2019) find an inhibitory mirror letter priming effect?…”

Section: Why Was the Mirror Priming Effect Facilitatory Not Inhibitory?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Mirror letter priming is rightward-biased but not inhibitory: Little evidence for a mirror suppression mechanism in the recognition of mirror letters.

Kinoshita¹,

Liong²

2023

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cogni

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Unlike other visual objects which are invariant to the left–right orientation, mirror letters (e.g., b and d) represent different object identities. Previous masked priming lexical decision studies have suggested that the identification of a mirror letter involves suppression of its mirror image counterpart reporting as evidence that a pseudoword prime containing the mirror letter counterpart slowed down the recognition of target word relative to a control prime containing an unrelated letter (e.g., ibea–idea > ilea–idea). Furthermore, it has been reported recently that this inhibitory mirror priming effect is sensitive to the distributional bias of left/right orientation in the Latin alphabet such that only the more dominant (frequent) right-facing mirror letter prime (e.g., b) produced interference. In the present study, we examined mirror letter priming with single letters and nonlexical letter strings with adult readers. In all experiments, relative to a visually dissimilar control letter prime, both the right-facing and left-facing mirror letter prime consistently facilitated, rather than slowed down the recognition of a target letter (e.g., b–d < w–d). Assessed against an identity prime, mirror primes showed a rightward bias, although it was small in magnitude and not always significant within an individual experiment. These results provide no support for a mirror suppression mechanism in the identification of mirror letters, and an alternative interpretation in terms of noisy perception is suggested.

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Where is mirror invariance? Masked priming effects by mirrored and rotated transformations of reversible and nonreversible letters

Cited by 8 publications

References 73 publications

Letters away from the looking glass: Developmental trajectory of mirrored and rotated letter processing within words

Letters away from the looking glass: Developmental trajectory of mirrored and rotated letter processing within words

Development of orientation sensitivity to Chinese characters in preschoolers: Evidence from a longitudinal study

Mirror letter priming is rightward-biased but not inhibitory: Little evidence for a mirror suppression mechanism in the recognition of mirror letters.

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