Holistic processing of Chinese characters in college students with dyslexia

Abstract

Expert face recognition has long been marked by holistic processing. Hence, due to the many visual properties shared between face perception and Chinese characters, it has been suggested that Chinese character recognition may induce stronger holistic processing in expert readers than in novices. However, there have been different viewpoints presented about Chinese character recognition, one of which suggests that expertise in this skill involved reduced holistic processing which may be modulated by writing experiences/performances. In this study we examined holistic processing in Chinese character recognition in adults with and without dyslexia, using the complete composite paradigm. Our results showed that the adults with dyslexia recognized Chinese characters with a stronger holistic processing effect than the typical controls. It seems that those with dyslexia relied overly on the visual spatial information of characters and showed deficits in attending selectively to their components when processing Chinese characters, which hindered the development of expert reading and writing skills. This effect was in contrast to previous perceptual expertise studies in which reduced holistic processing marked deficits in face/visual object recognition. This study is also the first to show that Chinese adults with dyslexia had persistent below average performances in Chinese literacy.

Faces and words are both associated and dissociated as evidenced by visual problems in dyslexia

“…Similarly, Schmitt et al 122 report that dyslexic children, unlike controls, show no global-to-local interference in the Navon task which the authors interpret as an overreliance on analytic processing as opposed to holistic or global processing. Conversely, compared to typical readers, dyslexic readers showed signs of stronger holistic processing of English words 71 and Chinese characters 106 , 123 , and illiterates process both faces and houses more holistically compared to controls 124 . It is unclear whether these results are inconsistent with our findings of intact global form face processing in dyslexic readers.…”

“…The visual processing of alphabetical scripts, such as Icelandic, and logographic scripts, such as the Chinese writing system, could be qualitatively different. Chinese character recognition also differs from face recognition as it requires extensive writing practice; writing experience could decrease holistic processing of such characters 106 , 123 , 128 in a similar way that face drawing experience appears to decrease the holistic processing of faces 129 . While increased holistic processing of English words in English-speaking dyslexic readers is a bit harder to reconcile with our results, the same authors reported similar holistic processing of faces for typical and dyslexic readers 71 , and impaired holistic word processing in dyslexia has also been reported 72 .…”

Holistic processing of faces and words predicts reading accuracy and speed in dyslexic readers

“…While all participants in the current study were college students—and reading is an integral part of college life–it would be difficult to argue that dyslexic students are the more expert readers. Interestingly, a recent paper by [ 40 ] shows that adults with dyslexia recognize Chinese characters with stronger holistic processing than controls.…”

Non-monotonic developmental trend of holistic processing in visual expertise: the case of Chinese character recognition

“…Although holistic processing is widely believed to be a general perceptual expertise marker across different domains that involve individualising within-category visual stimuli, several studies suggested the contrary. For example, expert Chinese character recognition is marked by reduced holistic processing (Chung et al, 2018 ; Liu et al, 2016 ), while novices (Hsiao & Cottrell, 2009 ; Tso et al, 2014 ) and Chinese readers with developmental dyslexia (Tso et al, 2020 , 2021 ) recognised Chinese characters with a stronger holistic effect. These findings are also in contrast to the previously observed reduced holistic processing effect associated with face recognition difficulties in the clinical population, such as patients with prosopagnosia (Avidan et al, 2011 ) or autism (Gauthier et al, 2009 ).…”