Letter processing and font information during reading: Beyond distinctiveness, where vision meets design

Abstract

Letter identification is a critical front end of the reading process. In general, conceptualizations of the identification process have emphasized arbitrary sets of distinctive features. However, a richer view of letter processing incorporates principles from the field of type design, including an emphasis on uniformities across letters within a font. The importance of uniformities is supported by a small body of research indicating that consistency of font increases letter identification efficiency. We review design concepts and the relevant literature, with the goal of stimulating further thinking about letter processing during reading.Keywords Letter identification . Letter perception . Font . Font tuning . Common features . Type design . Reading Motivated by the increasing realization that letter perception is an important but overlooked stage in the reading process (e.g., Finkbeiner & Coltheart, 2009;Grainger, 2008;Massaro & Schmuller, 1975;Pelli, Burns, Farell, & Moore-Page, 2006), there has been a resurgence of interest in letter perception in relation to reading. It is now clear that letter perception provides a critical front end for reading because letters are functional units; they are independent pieces of the word code (e.g., McClelland, 1976;Oden, 1984;Pelli, Farell, & Moore, 2003). The visual forms of letters exist within a larger structural design, a family of objects known as the type font. This idea has implications for perceptual identification that we begin to develop here.In previous research and theory, a core concept is distinctiveness-the properties that make one letter easy to discriminate from its alternatives in the alphabet. This has led to the central concept of feature detection in the literature (e.g., Fiset et al., 2008;Gibson, 1969;Massaro & Schmuller, 1975). Letters are defined by sets of features whose membership is determined by distinctiveness. If distinctiveness is indeed critical, increasing it through alphabet design should increase legibility. This logic has been recently advocated (e.g., Fiset et al., 2008;Gosselin & Tjan, 2008).1 However, if letter distinctiveness is an incomplete basis for understanding letter processing during reading, calls to redesign letters are premature.A richer view of letter processing incorporates structural relations between letters and originates in the field of type design. Type designers have long been concerned with letter form and its impact on reading. Text fonts are designed for reading continuous paragraphs of text, and the main goal in their design is to produce optimally legible letter forms. Type designers recognize the importance of distinctiveness, but they also emphasize the uniformity of letters (e.g., Carter, Day, & Meggs, 1985;Cheng, 2005). The classical goal of 1 The idea of improving legibility through research and design is not new. Modifications to increase distinctiveness have been explored by Kolers (1969), Crist (1980), and, more recently, Beier andLarson (2010). A modification that was actually used (mainly...

The effects of inter-letter spacing in visual-word recognition: Evidence with young normal readers and developmental dyslexics

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The effects of handwriting experience on functional brain development in pre-literate children

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“…[61]). In addition, commonalities may be important for defining a category of letter, while distinctiveness may help to process sub-ordinate categories, such as type-face or font [61]. …”

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